Anything for You
by DoorsxOfxPerception
Summary: Mustang is Fuhrer and Riza is his second in command... little do they know they're going to be having a tiny contribution to their relationship...
1. Chapter 1

******Just so everybody knows, I don't own FMA or any characters that are in it. This is just a fanfic I wanted to start for fun... and if anyone wants to sue me, I'm sorry but I don't have anything to offer anybody but a bunch of pencils... so... I don't think it's worth it honestly...

But anyway, this is my very first time posting here, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing. I guess I'll see how it goes over and if you guys like it then I'll post the other parts.

Well, enjoy!******

Riza wasn't feeling very well that day, but she knew she had to be professional at all times. Her heels clicked as she walked down the hall to the Fuhrer's office, and her stomach ached from throwing up twice that morning. Black Haiatai stared at her crooked headed and worried as she arched her back and hurled everything she had eaten the night before into her toilet. He even strutted over both times and lay on the bathroom floor with her when she rested her head on the toilet seat and gently he licked at her thighs. After a while she scratched his head as a thanks, and vowed that he would be the only man in her life because he was the only one who knew how to treat a woman the right way.

Her face was white, hands clammy, and she figured she should have been in bed or resting instead of working right now, but she also knew she had to be there for Mustang. It was so vital for him to do a good job now that he had been newly appointed to run the country, and she was very aware that she in many ways was his voice of reason. A stupid little flu was nothing that could keep her away from helping him.

She brushed away a piece of sweaty hair that draped in front of her eye and tried to snap herself out of feeling this ill before she reached for the handle to Roy Mustang's office door. The last thing he needed right now was to worry about one of his subordinates when so much more was at stake.

He needed to successfully turn the country into a democracy, and there was more to doing that then just making a few speeches and kissing a few babies, there were MOUNDS of paperwork he had to tackle, and hundreds of other leaders to meet with. Riza was usually the one who scheduled all those appointments, and made sure they didn't constrict his social life, and she was also the one who wrote half of the newly appointed bills he wanted to call into order. She was convinced that if she took one sick day the country would surely fall apart.

He was slumped over his desk reading some document when she opened the door and stepped inside. The light from the morning sun sprayed into the room from behind him and made Riza feel a bit sick again. Ever since she had been down beneath the city she had a some what issue with the light and she got headaches fairly easily, but they only lasted for a few moments and were nothing of concern.

She couldn't help but think about him when she saw him in this lighting…

"Good morning sir!" she announced, standing in front of his larger then life desk.

"Oh, Brigadier General Hawkeye, I didn't see you there." He must have been engulfed in his work and not have noticed her because the way he shot up from his papers insinuated she had scared him.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you Fuhrer Mustang," she said coldly, but meaning it. Above all else, she tried desperately to look normal and unaffected by her amazing stomachache. She stood up straight and locked her knees when she felt them start to buckle, and constricted her jaw into a look of strength to try to show him how healthy she was.

When he looked up at her his face got serious with curiosity as he took his new glasses off and set down the paper he was reading before.

"Riza, are you feeling alright today?" He only called her by her first name when he really believed there was something wrong, and that only happened once in a blue moon. In all truth, she felt the pang of feelings against her chest whenever he did this, and it was one of the reasons she preferred him to call her by her military status and last name, as she did him.

She could hide the pain in her gut, and stand up straight all she wanted but there was nothing she could do about the beads of sweat that built up around her hairline, and as she knew, when it came to her at least, the Fuhrer was very observant.

"Yes sir," she replied thinking of a quick and believable lie. "I think I ate some bad food last night, that's all." He cocked his brow, knowing she was lying.

"Are you sure?" he teased. "I didn't think you ate last night when you were here with me almost the whole time… besides the rice, which we both ate… and I'm not feeling ill."

Her eyebrow twitched in pain for only a moment. She had forgotten about that.

"Miss Hawkeye, it's ok to take a sick day," he reassured gently. "In all the days we've worked together you've never taken one."

"With good reason sir," she cut him off before he ended speaking, knowing she was going to have to find a bathroom pretty soon. "I am still capable of work; I give my word to you."

"Very well Brigadier General," he concluded, figuring she was too stubborn to listen to him anyway. He put his glasses back on and picked the papers up again. "But if you get me sick, you're fired!"

She made a small smile at his joke, glad that the conversation was over.

"I will try my best sir," she replied turning to leave.

When she got into the hall and closed the door behind her, she peered down both sides of passage, making sure there was no one in sight. When she was sure the coast was clear she sprinted to the nearest bathroom and threw up the eggs she had tried to eat that morning before work.

Little did she know, she had no reason to worry about losing her job, not only because Mustang would never think of giving her up, but also because the sickness she had was something he could never catch.


	2. Chapter 2

She was glad today there was hardly anything going on and she could basically sleep on her desk if she wanted to. The ill feeling had passed, as it usually did after about 11 or 12 in the morning, but she still felt weak and tired, and though she never put her head down on her desk to sleep, she was able to read a book and look professional while relaxing. She was sure she was coming down with something or another, and hoped it would only last for a few days, but she wasn't too concerned about it. It only affected her in the morning, and she only threw up once in a while after noon. She was positive it couldn't be too serious.

"Good morning Brigadier General!" Cheska beamed stopping at Riza's desk with a stack of books in her arms. "How are you doing today?" She seemed way too happy. Riza thought she was actually scared of her for a while and she was talking to her now like they were best friends.

"I'm doing fine, thanks," she replied still a bit confused. "You seem happy."

"Oh yes!" she began. "Today is just so beautiful! I don't have a reason really, it's just that I woke up this morning and looked out my window and thought that everything was just so bright. The birds were singing, the sun rise was lovely, the war is over, the country is going to be a complete democracy soon… Everything is just so exciting you know?" Riza smiled at her. The truth was, it was very exciting, and everything was as it should be. Who was to say that Cheska shouldn't be happy about it? She should be, after everything everyone had gone through to make it happen. "And the most exciting part is that you and I get to be a part of it, I mean, you more then me of course, but even I have a small part in the changes the country is going through, and I don't know, it just makes me feel amazing!"

She really was happy, and she wasn't afraid of showing it. In a way, Riza was happy too that people were feeling the way Cheska felt. It kind of made her feel like a celebrity, even though Mustang was the real star, or at least the only name that hung on the lips of the people in the country as the hero.

"Oh, I forgot!" Cheska remembered. "The Fuhrer said you weren't feeling very well, is everything ok?"

It was just the flu! Why were people making such a big deal about it? Everyone knew she was capable of taking care of herself, and yet they were treating her like a toddler.

"That jerk…" she muttered under her breath. What gave him the right to go along and tell everyone he ran into that she was a little pale in the face? He irritated her sometimes when he did things like this to seem charming, because he wasn't. Ever since that night under the city he wanted give her some courtesy where it wasn't necessary or needed. He was the one who said it was strictly business and they could go on with their lives afterward, not her.

"I'm feeling fine," she replied as nice as she could, (which wasn't very nice in fact) "I've just been having some stomach problems as of late. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Well…" Cheska began now a bit scared of the wrath of Riza, "I don't know much about your situation, you know, you and the Fuhrer, but he did seem very worried about you, and… I guess I was just curious… I'm sorry for bothering you Brigadier General." She made a quick bowing movement and started again down the hall.

He was… worried… about her? Why? He knew more then anyone else how independent she was. She didn't NEED his concern, but still, it was a little bit nice to have it anyway…

"Wait, Cheska!" Riza called from her desk. The book keeper spun around on her one heel surprised that Hawkeye sought her out before she did. "It's a slow day… maybe you and I could hang out for a while… just enjoy each other's company for an hour?"

Cheska smiled, nodded, raced over to her desk, set her books on the floor, and sat down in the chair next to her. The scene reminded Riza of when she was a little girl and had been invited to sit at the cool girl's lunch table even though she was a geek and a nerd. She swore she wore the same glowing smile that was on Cheska's lips right now.

"So, what's up?"

They talked and laughed for about an hour or so, and Riza was surprisingly adapting well with her. She had never had many "girlfriends" and had never actually talked to anyone for a long amount of time besides about military situations. Now, she felt like she was really opening up to someone… like for a moment, outside of sexual experiences, she was free to feel like a woman. She liked it.

Pretty soon, the sickness was brought up again, shockingly this time by Riza herself.

"So what exactly is going on with you Riza? You can tell me…" She trailed off figuring she had gone off the deep end on the whole being friends thing. The Brigadier General probably didn't have much of a social life and if they were going to be friends she was going to have to take it slow. She wasn't like Winry after all.

Riza really didn't notice.

"I don't know," she started, playing with her fingernails. "I've just been getting really sick in the mornings for the past few days, but I could feel it coming on about a week ago. I'm run down all the time no matter how much sleep I get, and I feel like I've been getting unnecessarily angry at Black Haiatai for no reason. I still think it's just the flu, but I've just been feeling strange…"

Cheska had read a book on nearly everything, every kind of illness you could think of, every type of alchemy, even random cook books were things she could recite backwards and forward just for fun. She had stumbled upon a book that described Riza's symptoms once…

…but… Riza?

She decided it couldn't be possible.

"Yeah, that really is weird," she replied, instead of giving the explanation of what she actually thought it was.

"Brigadier General Hawkeye," Mustang's voice cut like a knife through Riza and Cheska's conversation. They both snapped their heads up; completely amazed they hadn't heard him walk up to them before he was standing right in front of them. He was stealthy, but not THAT stealthy. "I gave you some papers to take home last night, did you finish them?"

"Yes sir," she answered shooting up into a standing position to reach over her desk. She could feel the blood rush away from her head when she did this, and when she looked at Mustang, he was a shade of purple and yellow. Her hand plummeted down onto the desk to steady herself as she felt her body sway forward.

Get a hold of yourself Hawkeye…

All she could hear was a soft ringing noise and two muffled voices that seemed to be off in the distance. Everything was going in slow motion as the vertigo in her mind took her to what seemed like a new dimension. She sensed a soft hand strictly grab her wrist and looked up at her Fuhrer as his lips moved, yelling something at her but there was still hardly any sound but the incoherence of his voice.

She swallowed hard and tried to pull herself out of it, but her last ditch effort failed to suffice and the world went black.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?" Mustang screamed louder then necessary at Cheska, his hand still firmly gripped around his number two's wrist. He knew he was being too rash and all, but Hawkeye was never like this. She was never sick, and if she was, she never let anyone know about it, but it was almost obvious to him now that she was in need of help.

The thing that scared him was the fact that she NEVER needed help. And now she was unconscious… It HAD to be something that could knock out a bull to be able to keep this woman down. He had worked with her long enough to know that.

"I-I don't know!" Cheska stammered. It was a mistake to let people know she was happy and try to make friends. She wanted to cry.

Cheska stood there with her fingertips to her lips and a petrified look on her face. If Mustang didn't act fast he was going to have two people on his hands that were passed out.

He grunted, pushed the book keeper out of the way, knelt down before the Brigadier General, and scooped her up into his arms.

"I'm taking her to the nurses station. You seen nothing," he stated before he sprinted away from her down the hall, holding Riza with a childlike clumsiness, careful not to hurt her.

As Cheska plopped down in the chair again to catch her breath she heard Mustang call to her from down the hall; "If the country falls apart while I'm gone, blame me!"

Riza regained consciousness as she lay in a hospital bed in a paper gown. She didn't know anything about the room yet, including where it was in the first place, so she just tried to breathe deeply and count the notches in the ceiling.

The wheels in her head weren't exactly turning yet, and she had to focus on who she was for a moment.

Riza Hawkeye… Brigadier General Hawkeye… second in command to Fuhrer Roy Mustang…

It snapped.

Fuhrer Mustang!

She snapped her whole body upward all of a sudden having all the memories of the event before the blackout rush back into her waterlogged brain. She had passed out right in front of her leader and showed the ultimate form of weakness to him first hand.

Those papers that he wanted suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world.

"Whoa, take it easy!" A hand flew over and landed on her knee.

There was someone else in the room with her?

She peered over at the unidentified person and was relieved, as well as horrified, to see Mustang sitting by her bed with a stupid comforting smile on his face.

"You just passed out," he happily said to her, hand still on her knee.

Her bare knee.

Her naked knee.

She held her breath and swallowed rigidly focusing on that hand. The one with the transmutation circle scratched and scarred into it. The one used for destruction and pain resting on her flesh as a friendly sympathetic gesture. If she had only been doing her job the right way that day, he probably wouldn't have to have the disfigurement on his skin for all to see. It was a reminder that he needed her. That's what happened when she wasn't there. That's just the tip of the iceberg of what COULD have happened.

How scared she was when the humunclous smiled her dense grin at her and proclaimed he was dead. The way all of her insides began to fall apart and the wasting of bullets as she pounded them into the head of something she knew couldn't die.

And then… she was willing to join him. Not because of the fact that if she went back to Central without him she would be persecuted, she had been persecuted worse in her life after all.

She would have joined him because she vowed to follow him to the end of the earth and back, and if death was a choice in either following her promise or not, she would have gladly taken it.

When he stepped out of the flames of the doorway he immediately put her heart back together, and she wanted nothing more then to throw herself at him and never let him go. Of course, they only nodded at each other and left the ruins like men.

But in the week following she buried her face in the pillow on her bed and cried everyday like a little girl. Black Haiatai was the only one who knew, and she liked it that way.

She was a soldier who couldn't do her job, and somehow got into the position of Brigadier General because she was the Fuhrer's friend and…

…though it was only for a moment…

…something more.

She almost let the tears she felt behind her eyes run down her face, but held them back remembering he was there.

"Are you ok Brigadier General…?" he carefully approached scooting forward in his chair to be closer to her.

She all of a sudden felt undeserving of being that.

"…yes… sir…" she peeped minutely, her eyes remaining downcast.

"They said you were severely dehydrated and it was a miracle you were able to even walk in here this morning," he stated. He could see her self esteem departing her and had to bring her up again. He would probably never say it to her outright, but sometimes he needed her vitality when he had none. She had been there for him through thick and thin, and never once had she ever asked for any kind of help from him. He had taken, and now that he was Fuhrer and had the means of giving back, he wanted to give back to her.

Of course she would definitely not appreciate accepting help from anyone especially the young Fuhrer. He had to make it subtle.

Riza glanced over at the bag that hung on the wall that contained saline solution and was attached to her arm, but her eyes returned to the warm hand on her skin.

"Hawkeye…?" he felt like he was talking to a wall.

"This is very inappropriate sir," she finally said, regaining her sense of right and wrong. He shouldn't be touching her in any way; especially after what had happened between them and how affected by it they both seemed to be lately.

"Oh," he muttered, retracting his hand from her and placing it in his lap. It just seemed so natural to touch her in her time of need he actually forgot what he was touching. "I apologize Brigadier General." He hated being professional with her.

She continued sitting there motionless for a moment trying to fight back tears. Why was she so damn emotional lately? It wasn't like her.

"I am to…" she finally said.

He leaned forward in his seat and tried to look at her as tender as he could.

"Don't ever be sorry for being human," he declared strictly. She didn't want to look at him, but his face was so close and consoling she couldn't help it. The only other time they were face to face like this was…

"Be sorry for things you can control, but never apologize to me about things like this." She nodded silently and smiled a sweet small smile at him. It was the nicest thing he had ever said to her.

He smiled back at her in the same fashion. Though neither of them were, they reminded each other of two virgins.

He grabbed her hand and his smile turned into more of a smirk as he sat back in the chair again.

"Besides, you don't have any time to be sorry, you have to help me run this damn country! I'm only an elected official; I can't do it by myself!"

She beamed a whole hearted grin and snapped back her hand from his grasp. Same old Mustang. What a jerk! He was only joking after all, but they both knew he was also telling the truth.

"You're awake. Miss…" the blonde nurse who had come in the room a moment before flipped through pages in her clipboard. She looked like she just got out of medical school, small figure, straight blonde hair, young, legs that were so long they almost went up to her neck. Riza knew what Mustang's reaction would be. She peered over at him to expect him drooling all over himself, but he just sat there looking straight forward making no advances on the young woman.

Maybe Riza wasn't the only one who wasn't feeling well.

"Brigadier General Hawkeye," she announced finally finding her name. "Wow, high rank, way to go!"

"Um… thank… you?" So this woman was a bimbo too. Mustang should have been hyperventilating.

The nurse turned to him.

"And… no… wait a minute!" she gushed. Riza couldn't help but roll her eyes. Awesome. Another fan. She gets sick and her nurse has a crush on Mustang, could the day get any better? Seriously?

"Are you Fuhrer Mustang!" she blushed.

"Why yes I am!" he gushed back, loving the attention.

"I'm Miranda," she came over to shake his hand, but when she presented it he took it and kissed the top of it making her giggle and blush harder. Riza wanted to punch both of them.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Miranda," he said coolly. Riza completely hated them. Right now, she jokingly wished she was a communist in another country so she didn't have to deal with him hitting on everything that had a vagina.

She steamed as she glanced over at them giggling at each other like idiots. She wished she had her gun…

"Sir," she interjected. They both stopped and looked over at her. 'I'm sorry, did I disturb your conversation?' "I hope I'm not out of line in saying this, but could I speak to Nurse Miranda alone for a moment?"

He nodded his head, dropped the nurse's hand and walked out of the room. Miranda watched him the whole way.

"He's really cute!" she beamed at Riza turning around again for a split second to face the closed door he was standing outside of.

"Yup," Riza responded unenthusiastically. "He's a real looker."

If they spent more than half a minute together she would feel differently...

"Can you tell me why I passed out nurse?" she began, hoping the conversation about Mustang would be finished.

"Oh yes," she began. "I thought someone told the Fuhrer so he could let you know when you woke up, but I guess he forgot." Riza could let her believe that, as long as she heard something from the horses mouth instead of the jackasses… or maybe in this case, from the cows mouth…

…Whoa! That was meaner then she meant it!

"You were so dehydrated we couldn't believe you were walking around like that! You must be Brigadier General for a reason!" She smiled. Her testimonial was a good pick me up for Riza's ego.

"Well… there is something else though…" Riza held her breath. Miranda's tone was something no patient wanted to hear. It was just the flu… right? "The doctor wanted me to ask you a few questions before I tell you for sure, ok?"

"Alright…?"

"Ok, well I guess the first question is… ok I'll just combine the first two questions into one; Have you had any sexual intercourse in the past three months, and if so, with how many different partners?"

It was ironic that they were just talking about how good looking Mustang was and now she was being asked about sex.

Maybe the whole thing was more serious then she imagined…


	3. Chapter 3

******Ok, so here's a steamy scene with Roy and Riza! :D Hope you like it as much as I liked writing it. Just so you know, this is a little bit more... explicit than the other two parts... you have been warned!

And I still don't own FMA, I forgot to mention that on part two, sorry! But, yeah, I'm still poor... please don't sue me...******

Her eyes were hazy and though the ground was hard and unforgiving against her aching back she was still so tired from the day of fighting, she almost fell asleep as soon as her head hit the earth. She could hear an army of snores throughout the tunnel from her men sleeping behind her and joked in her head about how if they were trying to be covert while they were awake; they were screwed as soon as they fell asleep.

It was funny… for a minute.

But then it made her think about their situation. The whole military was after them, along with the homunculi who wouldn't die no matter what they hit them with. Compared to all of them this was basically an army of ants at their picnic. They could stay alive for a while and maybe get a taste of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but after a moment, they would be flicked away without any recognition to their lives.

And then there were Ed and Al. They were just stupid boys. Actually, stupid young boys, and even though they were both skilled alchemists she still cared for them like little brothers. This whole thing was too much for them; it was too much for them to fight these monsters that didn't care how old or young they were, it was too much for them to be chasing after something they may not catch, it was even too much for them to be in the military in the first place.

But in the same breath, she knew she couldn't protect them. They were fighting for themselves, for each other, and deep down she knew they would be ok. They had lost their mother, father, limbs, and in Al's case themselves, and if they really wanted to get at least some of those things back they would at least fight to stay alive so they could keep looking.

People like them refused to die.

After all, everyone had their reasons. She was there to protect Colonel Mustang, and she refused to die because that was her mission. Stay alive and keep him alive. Everything else is mediocre. Everyone has their mission that the military assigns but when it all comes down to it, that mission is nothing compared to the mission you give yourself.

She had to put her mind at rest. Tomorrow was going to be an even bigger fight than today, and she figured that it would be a really bad thing to have a drowsy soldier with her finger on the trigger of a gun.

She quieted her mind and rolled over in her sleeping bag stretching out her neck a bit, and tried to let sleep take her, but right before she slipped off to her dreams she felt a large hand place itself on her shoulder. She swiftly swung her pistol that lay next to her into her hand, and as if it were made of feathers, she lifted it up over her body until she was sure the barrel was right in between the eyes of this potential foe.

"Move and I'll splatter your brains out all over the fucking ground," she said, as if it were a complete fact, her heart never skipping a beat.

Stupid enemies really needed to learn to do their homework on Riza before they attacked her.

"Are you really sure about killing a higher ranking officer then you?" It was Mustang. She just shifted around in her sleeping bag and faced him, but kept sure that the gun was still in position incase this was the shape shifter Envy. She studied his face to try to see any kind of difference that would apt her to pull the trigger.

"Lieutenant Hawkeye! When a commanding officer is in your presence there isn't much etiquette you should follow, but usually you don't shoot him!"

A smartass comment like that was good enough for her. It had to be him, her instincts were telling her it was safe anyway. There was going to be no ambush tonight. Tomorrow was going to suck as far as physicality but she had a feeling that they were going to be blessed with at least one night of rest.

"I'm sorry sir," she replied, now satisfied that it was him. She put her gun back down on the ground and sat up, tiredly arching her back and placing her hands behind her to steady herself. "I wasn't sure it was you."

She saw him nervously look away from her and breathe in deep, kneeling there on the ground by her legs.

"Is everything alright sir?" He snapped back up at her gaze.

"Yes," he said trying to sound as unflustered as he could and still failing. It was strange to see him somewhat unraveled as he was now. "Lieutenant, I was wondering if I could ask for your company down the passageway. I… have a concern to discuss with you."

She was confused. Why was he acting like this? She could have sworn that she heard him stutter and trip over his words and he was the most articulate person she knew.

"I guess so sir, but are you sure it can't wait till morning?" she inquired, tiredly scratching at the back of her head.

"I am." He said it as a matter of factually, at the same time, also having a tone that posed he wasn't sure, but the look in his eye told her he needed her assistance. She nodded. "It's not too far down, you'll see a light from the hallway."

He looked like he wanted to say more, but only smiled at her and stood up to leave.

A moment later, Riza began to follow.

She found the light he was talking about a half of a mile down from the sleeping area where she turned into a big opening in the wall. It was more or less a big hole that the Colonel had made into a room.

He sat in an indent in the far wall on top of the sleeping bag he had rested there. There were about six small candles lit so Hawkeye could see them from the corridor.

She saw him sit there with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together. His one leg bounced up and down which made his spiky hair shake back and forth. There must have been something really wrong.

"Colonel Mustang…?" she approached from the hole's "doorway".

He blasted up from his position as soon as he saw her and came over to welcome her in.

"You're worrying me Colonel," she began, "Is everything alright?" He looked around uneasily at everything else but her.

"Um… come sit with me Lieutenant." They both took a seat on Mustang's bed/sleeping bag. Mustang was timid for a moment, trying to grasp at what he was going to say to her. She gave him his time.

"I realize we may die tomorrow," he whispered his eyes facing the ground. She gasped at him. She had never heard him so defeated and serious about it. It was always a never say die attitude with him and now he was completely sure he was going to fail. The fact was always on her mind as well and surely on the minds of her men, but to hear Mustang voice it made her even more edgy than she was before. She sat quietly as he looked up at her with a deep aching pain in his eyes.

This was real.

"You don't know that sir," she reassured as soothing as she could. She knew he was right, but it was her job to keep his moral up. It was possible they were going to die, but when someone is as defeated as Mustang seemed they refuse to even try to fight. He had to fight, if not for himself, then for her.

"No Lieutenant, I know what we're up against," he deviated. She had never witnessed him in this light before. He seemed so… small.

"We at least have to fight," she said to him like she was scolding a young child. "If we don't fight, we'll have nothing to die for."

"I intend to," he replied, a bit stronger now. "I'll never lie down and let them kill me, you know what kind of man I am Lieutenant." She nodded; contented with knowing he would at least try. He continued, "All I'm saying to you is that I'm a realist, and there's a very good chance we might not see the daylight again."

He was right. There was nothing she could say to make the fact less harsh. They would be lucky to get out of there with all their limbs attached. Her eyes softened.

"As I was saying," he went on after a moment of silence. "There's a chance we may die down here, and I wanted to ask you…" His voice trailed off and he breathed heavily to try to get a hold of himself. His gaze never diverted from hers. "For your…" he stopped again, finding the words stuck too far in his throat to say.

"Yes Colonel," she whispered softly, placing her hand on his knee. Her gesture only seemed to make him more anxious.

"I would like to request your…" he blinked and looked up at her again, trying to make his face as serious as he could. "…companionship… for the night."

She was confused. He wanted her? He wasn't joking about the matter that was for sure, because in the silence his face never wavered from hers.

"Sir…" she wasn't sure what the right answer was. Here he was, baring his soul and trying to reach out to her, and though he was asking for sex, as she figured by companionship, the look of him posed the fact that it would mean so much more then just sex. She swallowed and looked at him, still waiting for an answer.

What would she say?

"It's not an official request Lieutenant. Your job is not at stake if you say no. I do understand." He meant it, and the fact that he gave her the choice to refuse almost made her agree.

"I will agree to be a warm body to sleep next to sir, but as for anything else…" she shook her head trying to stop the way her heart was beating. He put his hand on her shoulder and thanked her wholeheartedly.

They lay there together for about an hour in the Colonel's sleeping bag letting the candles burn out by themselves. Riza was cradled by Mustang's grasp, his arms wrapped around her waist as she lay with her back up against his chest.

She was attentive to his breathing on the back of her neck as it blew a few small hairs out of place and lightly, only once, made a small shiver go down her spine.

In the beginning, his grip was tense around her, like he was holding onto something he felt was slipping through his fingers like sand, and she felt like if he was grabbing at her any tighter one of her ribs would have broken. Of course, she let him hug her as hard as he wanted to, as long as he absolutely needed to, and by the way it felt, he did.

But after a while, his clutch, though it was still firm had gone more limp and gentle and she was able to get a little bit of rest.

She groggily, also forgetting who she was laying with in her sleepiness, rolled over so she was facing him and their chests were touching. She could feel the warm breath that was on the back of her neck now blowing at her lips, and smiled at how comfortable she was. Her one arm swung naturally around his shoulder and her hand began to play with the hair on the back of his head.

Then, Riza being a slave to the dream she was having, began to tenderly pull him closer.

Her eyes mistily began to open as warmth clamped itself around her lips. It was soft and amorous and it made her insides sing.

Finally, her Colonel's face came into view, eyes closed, obviously working on coming out of a dream of his own but pulling her waist closer to his.

She could feel a hardness growing against the outside of her bladder as she was now almost awake. She didn't want it to stop. It had been a long time since a man had touched her like this, and an even longer time since a man had even looked at her with hunger in his eyes.

She was getting hot and bothered as well, and began kissing him back. Their mouths got wider against each other and her tongue began licking at his teeth trying to gain access to the mysteries that the insides of his lips had to offer. As she continued she could feel the hardness in his pants that only seemed to present a bit of pressure against her rage into what she could only describe as the back of a large screwdriver…

…a very large screwdriver…

Now his eyes began to open to be greeted by the mixture of his Lieutenant's skin and his own eyelashes. He too felt the hot and wet lips against his and the soft dull sweeping of her tongue against his teeth. The now wild erection in front of him and pressing against Riza's stomach was also something he couldn't hide from his insight.

Was this even really happening?

If it were a dream he could climb on top of her and have his way with her like an animal, as he did in some of them, but if it weren't…

He could feel her eyelashes flutter against his cheek and knew she was awake. He proceeded to glance around the room at the dead and dying candles,

at the brown and rusted walls,

at the earth around him that looked exactly the same as it did before he had fallen asleep.

But now there was a beautiful woman next to him chewing at his lips and pulling him closer, almost too close to bare.

He took his face back from her, having to push her cheat away so he could see her in front of him. They looked at each other wide eyed, petrified at what had just almost ensued and breathing in and out heavily at the other's face. His eyes switched from staring deeply into her big brown eyes to her beautiful crimson lips he had never noticed were so beautiful, wanting nothing more then to stick his tongue in between them.

She stared back, passion burning deep in her eyes. She knew it was wrong, she knew it was frowned upon and above all else… this was… Mustang! He was the man she would never have and it was wrong to make that fact a lie.

But the burning in her abdomen didn't care about right or wrong, it was make it or break it and she had no intention of breaking it.

She grabbed him by his face and violently, but tenderly made her lips crash against his in an act that sent all the frustration, all the anger, all the love for him out in one burst. She wanted to let him know how much she loved him. She promised to walk to the ends of the earth for him, to follow him into hell or heaven, to lay down her life and even die for him. She wanted him to know how much she hated him sometimes when she saw him with another woman, kissing her and touching her thigh or whispering something sweet into her ear, and longed that someday that would be her. She wanted to send electricity all the way up and down his spine so he could feel how much he hurt her when he put himself in dangerous situations and ordered her to stay behind. She wanted him to know first hand that she was a woman and she wanted him more than any other girl that decided to ride him in the night because he was handsome. She wanted him to know that she seen him for who he really was; a big dumb jerk, and she still loved him.

This was the most affectionate and terrifying thing he had ever been through. Here was the woman he loved for many years, too close for comfort and yet making him feel like he was flying. Had she known how much he had cared for her throughout the days of their friendship and how many times he had been with another girl and turned them down because he always felt like he was cheating on her even though she wasn't his to be cheated on?

His eyelids flew open as she assaulted him with her lips. He tried to remember who this was on top of him; his comrade who was more like a man than a woman, who had no fear and had killed more people than he could count. They both had the touch of murderers, the faces of assassins, and a relationship they tried to keep strictly plutonic, but he couldn't help the feeling of arousal for her. He had always seen her as beautiful, even though she sometimes scared him with her callousness. She was too good for him, and at times was more to him like the mother he never had in madam Christmas, looking out for his safety, worrying about him even if she didn't have a reason to, making sure he had everything that made him happy and well taken care of.

He had never looked at that as… love, and if he did, it was a love that would never lead to this.

But the softness of her skin and the way her lips massaged his presented a love he hoped he never felt, especially from his own Lieutenant, as well as a love he prayed she would never know already existed for her in his heart.

He began slipping into her advance, softly letting his eyes close, and allowing his charred fingertips gravitate up to her face to pull her closer. Before he knew it, he had them coiled in her golden hair and their tongues were playing with each other like lovers.

There was something in this kiss that made both of them scared out of their minds, but at the same time, it was a good scared. It was like they were both the same person for a moment and the thoughts they were having were the same for the both of them, and it was so intense that both of them had lines of tears that dripped from both of their eyes tangling together in a union of pure simplicity.

All thoughts of self doubt were silenced and it was almost like perfection.

His body began to take over and he rolled on top of her, that screwdriver now positioned right between her upper thighs which she knowingly had moved away from each other to welcome it in. She could say nothing while he began to kiss her neck and bite feverously at it, the milky white flesh on her body that began to make goose bumps at the contact his warmth made with hers.

He felt like he might explode, the feeling so strong in his gut he almost couldn't bare it. He was the flame alchemist, known around the world as the best and only in his trade, but the fire that radiated under his skin was almost about to kill him. He swiftly, only for a moment, took his mouth away from hers and reached down to expose his throbbing appendage as did she, slipping her pajama pants down below her knees.

This was it.

He looked up at her one more time, his breathing fastening, in a look of pure terror and want. One last time to make sure it was ok.

She nodded, also breathing in the same fashion and grabbed at his back to pull him into her. She was unknowing of the magnitude of her answer but she didn't care. More then anything she wanted him, to feel him in every part of her and have a memory of him that would last a lifetime, or suffice her heart if she were to die by his side in the next coming days.

He closed his eyes, knowing there was nothing he needed to say at all and leaned in deep to kiss her and in one final burst of energy and love plunged inside of her.

There were no words to describe the pure joy and panic they both felt for each other in the last moments before they had officially became something more than just a Colonel and his Lieutenant, but the way it melted away with each touch was something only poets could describe.

She grabbed onto the fabric on the sleeping bag letting her mind go to rest and willingly giving up her body to the animal that lay inside her gut. She didn't know exactly what to touch with him moving in and out of her in an act of what she believed wholeheartedly was love.

Her back arched and she tried not to scream and he picked her up and pulled her closer to his chest, her shirt somehow open and his completely off and the cold sweaty skins were pressed together as he continued to give her all he had.

She watched him as his face displayed a look of pure pain and then go back to rest as he grunted, moaned, and then showed complete relief.

They said nothing for a long time, only touching each other's faces in the dark and stillness, and only stopping for long kisses a few times and a hug that lasted for the rest of the night.

The next morning, they awoke to their bare bodies in a lock that only lovers made.

They got dressed in silence, hardly looking at the other.

"Thank you for your…" Mustang began breaking the silence finally. She looked up at him with curiosity beaming through her face. "…business consultation," he concluded flaring his nostrils in pain. "Lieutenant Hawkeye. We never have to mention this again."

His words cut her soul like a dull edged dagger would to paper. She turned away, stopping at the doorway to quickly nod at him and leave.

She was surprised she only got about three yards down the passageway before she fell to her knees in tears, quietly sobbing the memory away and wishing it would all drain into the soil and it would make the whole ordeal never happen.

Mustang stood there motionless with the look of distain on his face and the feeling of filth for letting her go pulsing through his veins before he punched at the dirt wall as hard as he could with tears flowing down his cheeks.

If only he said he loved her…


	4. Chapter 4

"Miss Hawkeye!" the blond nurse exclaimed getting impatient. All she could see was Riza sitting there frozen, staring off into space with wide eyes. She couldn't tell that the Brigadier General was having one of the most intense flashbacks in her life.

"I'm sorry what was the question?" She was hoping beyond all hope that she wasn't going to tell her she had an STD or something. She figured Mustang wasn't the cleanest creature on Earth, but that wasn't HER fault! It happened in the heat of the moment, and she was stupid… she knew it…

She praised her stupidity everyday when she looked in the mirror.

They knew how they felt about each other. They had physical contact, and he wanted to move on and act like nothing ever happened. Her being the Lieutenant coincided to his advances and walked away from him like he would have done if he were in her quarters. She knew it was foolish to think he would want her after she gave herself to him, but it didn't seem that way when she was lying there with him…

But, isn't that always the way these things go?

Sex scatters feelings around like a blender and though it may be fun while you're spinning around and becoming a part of someone else's juices, when it's all said and done, you feel like you've left most of yourself behind with nothing to show for it.

It took her a while to get over it, to be able to wash the memory away like she had with many others, but every once in a while she would think about it and have to go shower or wash her hands.

She was just his whore that night; only he didn't even have to pay for her services so long as he acted like the ordeal wasn't premeditated. She felt dirty and horrible thinking about how easy it was for him to get her to do it and make it consensual, yet how she still felt like a rape victim whenever the thought would pop up in her head and he was standing in front of her.

Of course, she had to remind herself that she would still do anything for him. But now the friendship between them was, as far as she was concerned, obsolete.

She was his second in command and he was her Fuhrer, and that was it. He would address her as Brigadier General Hawkeye, and she would address him as Fuhrer Mustang. She would smile at his jokes, pull all nighters with him, and if there was a mission that could compromise his safety, she would gladly still lay down her life for him in a heartbeat.

But she had to promise herself she would never let it go as far as it did that night under the city. She would never be in a compromising position with him again, and she would never ever let her think he could be that close to her, not even half as close.

It was now strictly professional, mostly for her own sanity, and she had kept true to her word, but who was to know that the night would come back to bite her months later?

"Have you had any sexual intercourse in the past few months, and if yes, with how many men?" she spoke as if she were talking to a child, like Riza was the bimbo in the conversation.

Of course, this nurse wasn't raising the bar very high for Riza to surpass her intelligence.

She clasped her hands together and started playing with her fingernails apprehensively.

"Can I opt out of answering these questions…?" she advanced. The nurse smiled and leaned up against the wall letting the clipboard hang at her side, like she already knew the answer.

"I assure you, everything you say in this room is completely confidential Miss Hawkeye," she told her sarcastically.

It was funny; Riza didn't think she even knew that the word "confidential" existed.

She swallowed and figured she might as well tell the truth, almost sure she wasn't the only one who slept around in the room.

"Yes…" Miranda scribbled something down on her clipboard.

"And how many partners?"

"Just one…" She wrote that down too and then looked it over for a minute before snapping her head back up at Riza.

"Well… I don't know how to tell you this…" she smiled. There was no concern for Riza in her voice. She was just trying to hurry up so she could go and talk to Mustang out in the hall and maybe get his number. Riza wanted to hurt her so badly…

She went on; "You're pregnant Miss Hawkeye."

Riza literally stopped breathing. _Pregnant_?

With…

"I'd see a gynecologist to be sure, but all your blood work and urine tests show it quite definitely," Miranda went on, only making Riza even more pissed off.

Here she was, just finding out that she was going to give birth to a bundle of pooping, screaming, loveliness, and this incredibly stupid nurse kept on about it like she couldn't understand the first time. It was like she had diarrhea of the mouth and her prime act in life was making Riza irritated.

She was pregnant… with the ruler of her country…

It would have already been horrible enough if he were still only her commanding officer, but… now he was the Fuhrer, she was second in command…

…and she was having his baby…

Her brain started shutting down and the room was spinning again. She couldn't quite wrap her head around this…

…_Pregnant_?

Was it even possible?

She was a good soldier, with a trigger finger that was never out on commission and eyes that made her enemies shutter and shake like leaves. She had no fear when she was in the front line charging at the opposite side of the battle ground, knowing any person trying to kill her would surely fall first. She was harsh and real…

…was she capable of raising a child…?

She stared down at the floor in horror and didn't bother in hearing the stupid nurse leave the room, even when she announced it.

…pregnant… with… Roy…?

She almost threw up again…


	5. Chapter 5

***Thank you so much for all your kind comments on the last part! You guys are awesome! :D I hope you like the next few chapters. Promise it'll only get better from here!***

**A/N: And, I STILL don't own FMA... promise!**

By the time she was able to leave the nurses station it was basically an hour after the time she would have gone home had she been working all day. She requested to get a ultrasound from them so that everyone was sure, and was astonished when she left the building with what looked like a picture of a white jellybean on a black background in her hand.

The doctor congratulated her, an old burly man who had a fluffy gray beard, and smiled a toothy wide grin when he asked who the lucky man was.

That's when Riza burst into tears.

His expression snapped to empathy and he reached over to hand her a tissue box. He never meant to hurt her with the news, the arrival of a baby was something to be celebrated! Of course, he knew it wasn't the same for every woman he saw, especially for ones who didn't have a young gentleman by their side when the news was given to them.

She was inconsolably sobbing for some reason in the doctor's office and she didn't care what the burly man thought of her. It had all built up inside of her and came flooding out hysterically with nothing she could do to stop it anyway. It wasn't because of the news of her pregnancy; that hadn't exactly sunk in yet, and the jellybean in her belly was something that presented more of a fairytale then a part of her reality. She couldn't quite place her finger on what was making those tears come rushing out like they did, but she decided that it was Roy.

He was always the reason she cried.

She was going to have to tell him, but what was she going to say? Was it going to be something like: "Hey, guess what? That night you thought you were going to die and you had sex with me, well, yeah, about that…"

Her shoulders slumped as she walked into her apartment and threw the photo onto her end table. The door slammed behind her and she walked over to her couch where she plopped herself down and ripped the tie out of her hair, letting it spill out over her shoulders. As she took a heavy sigh and closed her eyes Black Hayate came running over, jumped on the couch and after she was motionless and gave him no attention, he softly placed a paw on her knee and looked up at her with big puppy eyes.

She opened her eyes and smiled down at him, worriedly whining at her.

"Well boy, what do you think I should do?" she asked him, scratching at the fur on the top of his head. He scooted closer and placed his head on her lap, still blinking up at his master. She began staring off into nothingness while still petting him. "I guess I should tell him huh?" He stood up then and barked in her face softly but angrily.

"You're mad I haven't let you out yet aren't you boy?" He ran off the couch, grabbed his leash from the door, came back to her and set it on the couch where she sat, obediently panting and wagging his tail at her. She reached down, clipped it on his collar and began walking him to the door. Before she left the apartment she picked up the small photograph and smiled down at it.

It WAS kind of cute…

KIND OF were the key words. It was only still a jellybean after all.

"Come on boy," she said to black Hayate as he whined for her to hurry up, and she stuffed the picture in her coat pocket. "We're gonna go say hi to Uncle Roy."

She'd be lying if she told anyone she didn't like walking in the rain. It was beautiful for it tonight, a light rain that fell so gracefully it didn't need a bunch of clouds covering the moon that cast illumination on each droplet. Black Hayate didn't mind it either, as he walked right beside her and sniffed at every smell on the pavement as it was being washed away by the water that fell from the sky.

She saw rain as a cleansing for the Earth, and with all the mishaps that went on that day it was only appropriate that everything was being renewed in the night.

They came across the large building that Roy's apartment was in. It was funny that two and a half months after he was appointed Fuhrer he was still living in his dinky old apartment house. Maybe it was procrastination, maybe it was nostalgia, but none the less he knew he was going to have to move into the mansion that still waited for him and was vacated of all the things the old Fuhrer had possessed.

In fact, it was almost as if the people had erased Bradley from their record books completely. Even she refrained from thinking about him most of the time, and when she did it was almost as if it… scared her. She knew he was dead and gone, and was of no one's concern, but thinking about the way his unnatural eye had stared at her and his monstrous teeth glistened at her still fastened her heart, and sometimes caused her sleepless nights. Even after two and a half months had passed, she still had nightmares about the monsters she had fought, even though she and her men came out victorious.

Everyone gave Mustang his time in moving into the mansion since they all knew he was only human. It was a human thing to want to say goodbye to his old life, and an even more human thing to dread having to sleep in a homunculus' bed.

Riza walked into the building with BlackHayate happily trotting behind her and they began to make their way up the stairs approaching Mustang's apartment. She wasn't sure of what she was going to say when he answered the door and hoped it wasn't going to be inappropriate to randomly show up at his doorstep. She figured she should have called first.

She stood there for a minute staring at the wooden door that seemed to be much more uncompromising then she remembered from the last time she was there…

…but that was almost a year ago…

She really should have called first, and figuring he probably had company turned and began walking away, but felt a strong pulling on her arm. She looked back to see that Black Hayate had planted himself in front of the Fuhrer's door. He knew what Riza had to do, and he decided to be the one to make sure she got it done since everyone else was too scared of her to make her do anything.

"Black Hayate, come!" she whispered pulling harshly on his leash. It did nothing but make his head lurch forward as he sat there like a bolder and let her pull on him. "Damn it Black Hayate! Come! Now!" He whined and lay down there to give himself more leverage.

She stopped pulling on the leash for a minute and looked angrily at him, knowing what his agenda was. He happily wagged his tail and panted at her when she came back over by the door thinking she would knock on it and talk to Roy, but she had another plan. She reached down and grabbed him by the collar.

As he felt himself being pulled away he let out the loudest bark either of them had ever heard. They both actually cringed at it.

"Stop that!" she whispered, although it was basically pointless because Roy most likely could have heard them from two miles away. Black Hayate looked over at the door and when he didn't notice any movement, let out another loud bark. Riza almost wanted to cry again. She wasn't ready to tell him yet, and her dog was being a total douche bag! He never acted like this, in fact he was the most well behaved dog she had ever come in contact with and she never in a million years thought he would be so insubordinate.

They both jumped when they heard the door swing open and Mustang step out into the hall. He was wearing his street clothes, a powder blue button down shirt that was mostly open from the mid chest area up which let them see his tannish white skin, and ordinary black pants. He wore no shoes and nothing on his feet besides white socks and peered down at Riza in curiosity. His face was flush and he looked just the slightest bit winded.

"Brigadier General, what are you doing here?" Riza almost made Black Hayate fall over backwards when she let him free of her grasp and shot up into a less crouched over position.

"Sir, I have a matter to discuss with you," she stated, trying to act as professional as she possibly could. That's when her curiosity took her over and she peeked in the crack he had left open between the door and the wall where he stood. A woman's leg that stretched from his couch and wore a dark blue high heel came into Riza's view. Her eyes made a look of ache when she turned back to him and saw a ruby red lipstick stain on the collar of his shirt.

Now she knew why he was so winded, and why it took him not one, but two of Black Hayate's barks to come to the door. She felt like she was hit by a ton of bricks right in her gut as he stood there and stared at her waiting for her all too important announcement that couldn't wait another minute, but his gaze turned into one that was more worried about her as she stood there silently.

"Brigadier General, is everything alright?"

This feeling was new to her and so intense that she felt she might die. It wasn't like he was cheating on her, she wasn't even with him, but she still felt an extreme pain go all throughout her body like she had been shot point blank by him with her own pistol. Her eyes went back and forth between him and the leg, and then back again.

It was fight or flight.

She was silent and left him with nothing but a pained look on her face before she bolted down the hall and out the door of the apartment building, this time pulling Black Hayate with a super human strength.


	6. Chapter 6

The blond nurse stared at him with lust filled eyes when she exited the Brigadier General's room in the hospital and they talked for almost an hour about basically nothing on her lunch break. He knew it was wrong to leave Riza in there all alone, but also figured it was better to let her feel as independent as everyone knew she was. Besides, she was only dehydrated and was probably going to be there for another ten minutes until she could stand again.

Anyway, he knew he had to move on after everything that happened between him and his friend. Lately, after it happened, she acted like he wasn't even there anyway; it was just her missions and her work that kept her around. He couldn't keep doing this to himself: thinking they would ever be together for real.

It killed him to think she could hardly even look at him anymore, let alone carry on a conversation.

He never intended on actually doing anything with Miranda, he might have been a horny fuck but he was still a gentleman. Maybe a few drinks, a kiss or two, a first date, and after that he could set up another date or just forget about her. But when he took her up to his apartment for a cup of coffee she climbed on top of him and started kissing down his neck… and then opened his shirt continued down his chest…

He could feel his own eyes flutter and his breathing getting faster as he got aroused again, but the smallest part of him felt… wrong…

Miranda was… pretty, and blond, but his mind kept going back to how beautiful and golden Riza was.

Riza was perfect, and this was just some girl who he suspected was perfect to somebody else…

But he kept trying to remind himself that Miranda was a pretty blond girl who wanted to be with him, while Riza was a beautiful golden goddess who couldn't even look him in the eye. He had to move on, because there was nothing he could possibly say or do for him to make her… love him…

Miranda's hand was slipping gracefully down Mustang's pants and teased at his sensitive skin as her face lifted back up and bit at his straining neck. This was so wrong! It felt good, of course it always would, but it wasn't… Riza. She was the only one who touched him and made it feel almost… right.

They both jumped when they heard the first sound from out in the hall, but Miranda pushed him back down on the couch and continued on her work. The second one was enough to make him push her off his aching body and go check it out as she sat cross legged there waiting for him to come back, and to his surprise…

There she was. The one night he had a girl in his grasp that was ready and willing to throw herself at him at moments notice, and the one night he was finally ready to move on and try to get his own life back, there she was.

He wanted to push Miranda out and be completely rude to her for no reason so he would never have to see her again. A conversation with Riza was worth a hundred girls he could have sex with, and he would probably give them all up for a single kiss from her.

Miranda strutted over to him as he stood in the doorway ready to go after his Brigadier General when she ran out the building, and she swung her arms around his neck.

"Who was that?" she whispered seductively. "Jealous lover?" Her lips traveled up to his earlobe and sucked the flesh into them.

He felt absolutely nothing for her now. It was all Riza. He would do anything for HER, not this girl.

He reached behind the door at his coat rack, again gently maneuvering away from the blonde girl who now frustrated crossed her arms at him, and handed her the purple jacket she had hung there.

"It's been fun," he said politely to her, "I'll call you sometime." She bit her bottom lip, and cocked her brow at him, standing there trying to hand her the jacket. When he didn't waver from his place she snatched it rudely from his arm and pushed herself out his door.

Thanking whatever was watching over him that got her to leave; he closed it behind her and preceded scrambling to slip his shoes on. He wasn't sure what Riza had wanted, or why she ran away from him like that, but he wasn't the kind of man to leave it a mystery. He had to go after her. He spent most of his time these days chasing after her anyway, for a look, a smile, a laugh, even a glare of hatred, and he knew he would spend the rest of his life chasing her, even if she were standing right next to him.

Maybe he would never move on. The funny thing was, he didn't have much of a problem with it.

"I was pretty stupid there, huh boy?" Riza laughed with Black Hayate, wiping away some wetness that had sense stopped falling from her eyes. They sat at a bench that was perched on a sidewalk across from a park less than a block away from Roy's apartment. It was still raining a little bit, but it was so cool and blue out, either of them wanted to waste it. Black Hayate didn't mind being out this late and Riza didn't want to go home just yet. Sleep made things that happened in the day so vivid they were sometimes too much to handle and this day in particular was a monster.

Black Hayate panted an agreement to Riza and set his doggy face on her lap.

"I don't know what came over me," she said, "Maybe hormones…? Yeah, I can say that now!" He whined sadly at her from her lap and looked up at her face which made her dimly smile down at him and scratch at his head. "I'm not mad at you boy," she reassured. "You've gotta keep me in line since I'm gonna be acting a little bit strange for a while." Still sadly, he whined again and positioned his head differently on her legs. "Hey! None of that mushy stuff boy!" she continued stronger now. "You were a good soldier tonight. Our mission was to tell Roy about the baby, and you went above and beyond to make sure I did it."

He sat up, and if he had a human arm she swore he would have been saluting her. He might have just been a dog, but when she said he was a good soldier he always felt better, and she could plainly tell. Court marshal was a bad thing, and when she said that was what he was he'd hang his head in shame and basically go into a deep depression. Never mind good boy, bad boy, he knew the difference, and he was mostly always a good soldier.

"Well, come on soldier," she said to him picking up his leash and standing. "We've got an early day tomorrow."

Just as she turned to begin walking back to her apartment she stopped dead in her tracks to the sound of yelling and stomping behind her. Her hand flew to her gun that she tucked in her pants for safe keeping in case of an emergency, and she stood still until she was sure the perpetrator was chasing after her. Black Hayate growled lightly, he too ready to jump at moments notice.

But as the voice got closer… it sounded a lot like Roy's… of course it couldn't be him because he was "entertaining company" at the moment. Why would he be chasing her?

"NOW BLACK HAYATE!" she shouted spinning around to face him when she was sure he was right behind them. They both faced the same way in perfect unison, Riza holding her cocked gun in her hand and Black Hayate baring his teeth at the man.

Roy's hands shot up into the air hoping she seen that it was him… then hoping she hadn't seen him if that would make for a better chance at not getting shot.

She almost laughed at him as she put down and clicked the safety on her gun, Black Hayate, also taking back his ferocious teeth and now wearing an excited joyous face at his Uncle Roy. He was standing there, his coat slung lazily over his shoulders, and shoes thrown on so sloppily one of them wasn't even tied. He was an army man, prim and proper, and his shoe was untied.

"Fuhrer Mustang?" she approached. He dropped his hands and walked over to them so he could bend down and pet Black Hayate's head as a hello. It just occurred that the more time he spent around Riza the more he was ALMOST getting shot. It was beginning to be very anticlimactic.

He stood back up and faced her professionally.

"Brigadier General, you had a matter to discuss and my time has just opened up."

"I apologies for the intrusion sir, and for the dramatic exit, it… isn't like me, and it wont happen again." She could feel tears swell up in her eyes again. Damn tears! Damn hormones! She sniffed them back, but one decided to slip out and fall down her face.

Embarrassed and hoping he didn't see it she flicked it away without warning.

He saw it.

"Brigadier General, are you… crying?" She was silent. She WANTED to say something, but if she said anything she felt like she might burst into tears. She still felt like he had cheated on her, even if he hadn't. He was softer as he went on. "It's because you seen the woman in my apartment that you left like you did, wasn't it?"

She looked away, but was still silent.

He sighed and wiped his hand over his face. It was time to bring up the night under the city. He was oh so wrong in thinking that they could just move on with their lives and act like it had never happened, but he never thought it would affect their emotions so badly or that it would feel like a profoundly hurtful moment to both of them either.

"I have to move on Riza," he whispered, tears of his own knocking at the back of his eyes. She was still perfectly quiet. "Can we just be Roy and Riza for a second, instead of Fuhrer and Brigadier General?"

"I thought we never had to talk about that again sir," she said after a moment.

"It's Roy," he said, demanding it subtly. "And that's an order." She nodded and he went on. "Why have you been avoiding me lately?"

She bit her lip and stayed quiet. She was going to scream if she opened her mouth.

He sighed frustrated at her. Who knew that wartime sex could change a person like it changed her?

"Am I permitted to call you Riza, Brigadier General?" She looked up at him and nodded.

"Yes sir," she replied nervously, and then she remembered her order. "I mean..." She had practiced saying his name in the mirror some days, but now that the moment was actually presenting itself, she felt the throb of feelings arise in her throat for him. This was exactly why she only called him Fuhrer. "I mean... Roy..." It stuck in her throat like peanut butter, but the word also made her smile a bit in thoughts of how sweet he could be sometimes.

This was unhealthy; she should have denied the order and called him by his rank. It worked so far.

He was surprised at how the mention of his own name on her lips made his face go flush.

"Riza... about that night..." he began softly. She cut him off.

"We don't need to talk about this," she stated starting to feel hurt by the subject.

"No, I think we do!" he interjected reaching out and grabbing her by her shoulder.

"I think we both know how you feel," she exclaimed pulling away from him. "You were sure to make that very clear when you tricked me into thinking you gave a damn about me, fucked me, and then shrugged me off like I meant nothing to you!" Her voice was starting to get louder than she wanted it to, but at the time she didn't seem to care much. Right now she was Riza Hawkeye and he was a man who took advantage of her instead of him being the ruler of the country and her his Brigadier General.

Yet, he was also the man who she loved above everything else.

"You think I shrugged you off because you mean nothing to me?" He was almost screaming at her at the top of his lungs, the intensity in his eyes making her shutter. They were standing across from each other still waiting for the other to say something. Riza was again on the verge of angry tears, and Roy stood huffing at her, nostrils flaring. He would have incinerated something had it not been raining out.

"What did you want me to fucking do?" he went on, still venting at her. "Did you want me to let you hang on my arm like a fucking trophy girlfriend? Would you have rather me let you make out with me in public just because you could? DON'T YOU GOD DAMN THINK I WOULD HAVE?" He had grabbed her harshly by her shoulders again and was dangerously close to shaking her as he screamed in her face.

"I WOULD HAVE RATHER YOU LET ME THINK YOU FELT LIKE SOMETHING IMPORTANT WENT ON BETWEEN US INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE IT WASN'T A BIG DEAL BECAUSE IT WAS TO ME!" she screamed back.

He looked like was about to explode.

"I SHRUGGED YOU OFF BECAUSE YOU MEAN EVERYTHING TO ME, DAMN IT!"

He hung his head in shame, the thought that should have been locked somewhere deep in his heart now floating out somewhere in the air, mingling with thoughts of hers. He felt somewhat lighter though, the heaviest weighing feeling he lugged around with him for years now out in the open, and for the first time in what felt like forever he could breathe.

His heated confession hit her square in the face like a bolder, knocking her back a step. She knew he cared on the stance of colleagues, but as far as it went for actually loving her… she really thought she was the only one.

Of course, there were hints that she only sometimes noticed from him, the way he would look at her when he thought she couldn't tell he was looking, and how fast he would turn away when she turned around again. Sometimes he would have a slip of the tongue while talking to her and instead of recovering like a normal person, his face would go flush and he would have to go onto another subject.

Her hand fiddled with the photograph in her coat pocket. She had to tell him, and now there was a break in the conversation. It was as good of a time as she was going to get.

She pulled it out and slapped it into his chest. There was no going back, and she might as well get it done with while she mustered up the courage.

He peered up at her, now her eyes facing the ground as the palm of her hand rested on something she placed on his chest. His hand traveled up and grasped the photograph as she stared down at Black Hayate nuzzling at her leg sportively.

Her arm fell back to her side as his eyes glazed over the white jellybean on a black background. Confused, he looked up at her expecting an answer but finding nothing as she stood there in the same fashion. He looked back to the picture trying to find something, and when he turned it to the back he found it.

In small sloppy handwriting he read the words:

"Riza Hawkeye, fetal examination September 14th 1921

Fetus in good health, developing normally

Date of conception; approximately three months ago"

He supposed he was staring dumbfounded at the jellybean for quite a while because when he looked up expecting to see Riza standing in front of him, he could feel the sunrise greeting his skin, the air lick at his hair like it did after it rained, and above all else…

…she was gone…


	7. Chapter 7

******A/N: Thought I'd write a flashback about Roy's childhood because not many fanfics talk about it. Hope you like it! :D******

He tucked the picture of his unborn child into the crack of his bathroom mirror and stared at it for a long time after he splashed his face with cold water to try and wake himself up.

It was hard to believe that a man and a woman could make another person all together, even when he thought about the laws of equivalent exchange. To think... he was going to be a father with the woman he loved, even though he never experienced what went into actually being a father in the first place...

Growing up in a whore house, he knew what went into making a baby at an almost too tender of an age, and even a few of his most favorite women who took care of him when Madam Christmas was taking care of customers had died or became very ill from backstreet abortions or STDS.

One of the most memorable things that went on in his childhood was when a call girl whose name was Nicole fell deathly ill because of an infection of some sort. Madam Christmas let her live with them for the time being while she got better. Mustang, being only ten years old at the time had the responsibility of bringing her water or warm towels every hour like her life depended on it, and she'd smile at him and thank him wholeheartedly.

He never saw her as a whore like everybody else did, instead she was just Nicole, a woman who sometimes gave him candies out of her purse and somehow always knew when there was something wrong with him, and now she was just a sick woman who needed the help that no one else was going to give her.

He remembered peering into a crack in the bathroom door when he heard Madam Christmas and the Nicole rustling around together. He wasn't sure what he thought he heard but he knew they sounded like they needed help.

Madam Christmas was in front of her, being gripped tightly around her waist, and trying to lower Nicole onto the toilet. Mustang had never noticed how frail and weak she was when she was always under the covers of their guest bed and all he could see was her red hair and beautiful smile, but seeing her like this told a different story. He could barely see her upper body around his caretaker, but his eyes immediately traveled down to her legs. On the inside of them there was nothing but reddish blackish bubbling skin that seemed to ooze whenever she moved them, and it only got worse as his eyes moved up them.

"ROY?" he heard Nicole scream and saw her try to cover herself up with the bottom of her shirt. Madam Christmas spun around and stood in front of the door where she cursed harshly at him.

"GET OUT!" she yelled at him. "GET OUT AND GO PLAY OR SOMETHING! DON'T YOU DARE COME BACK UNTIL THE SKY IS DARK, DO YOU HEAR ME?" She didn't wait to hear his answer, instead just slammed the door in his face.

He remembered running so far away that day, he ended up in another town before he stopped at all, and by the time he came back to the house it would have had to be midnight or later.

The first thing he saw when he came in the door was Madam Christmas sitting at the kitchen table with an expression of hate on her face and her arms crossed over her chest. He thought he was going to get a lashing for sure and hung his head as he stood in front of her.

"What have I told you about spying on people Roy?" she croaked. He said nothing. "I expect an answer young man." Now she was getting more abrasive towards him. His head was beginning to sink into his shoulders with every word she said.

"You told me not to do it, Ma'am," he squeaked, still ashamed for seeing what he saw.

"That's right young man! You don't do it!" she yelled. He could feel tears swelling to the surface of his eyelids, but kept silent. He already felt horrible enough for witnessing Nicole's naked legs, and the lecture wasn't making him feel any better. He knew it was wrong to spy on her, and knew she wouldn't appreciate it, but sometimes his childhood curiosity got a hold of him and he couldn't help but stare at people.

Madam Christmas sighed heavily and closed her eyes, obviously disappointed in him.

"I'm sorry Madam-"

"Don't you talk to me about being sorry sir!" she exclaimed at him as he hung his head back down, careful not to make her even madder. "Besides, Nicole has taken the liberty of punishing you instead of me, and I accepted. She's the one you were spying on anyway, and she'll figure out what to do with you."

He wasn't sure what to say or do, so he just stood there motionless, feeling smaller than ever. He was used to the feeling, being one of the shortest in his peer group, wondering when his growth spurt would come around, and not knowing what to expect since he didn't know exactly know what genes he possessed.

"Well, what are you waiting for, huh?" she stood up and towered over him, hands on hips. "Get your butt in there before I break a stick off the tree, you hear?" He quickly nodded and scooted his way into the guest room where Nicole sat reading a black covered book. He quietly closed the door behind him and solemnly paced over to her bedside, his head still hanging as low as he could manage.

"Hey Roy," she said carefully, placing the book down on the bed next to her.

"Hi…" he squeaked, trying to look as sorry as he could.

"Do you want to talk about anything you saw today?" she went on. He shook his head violently which made her giggle. "It's ok," she said beginning to draw back the covers. He looked away as fast as he could when she began to lift her skirt to reveal the bubbling skin, and she winced as if the fabric were pulling her skin with it.

"Roy," she began, talking like she was out of breath. He refused to look and stared at the end table that sat next to her bed, and she reached out and took him by the shoulder. "Roy, I want you to see it for what it really is."

He didn't want to see it again! Didn't she understand that it was a mistake he made to look in the first place? He was just too curious for his own good!

He turned his head to look at her weak smile of encouragement before his eyes began drifting down to see the inside of her small legs. He couldn't help but gasp when he saw them, the skin looked like it had been burned away in spots and one of her blisters had popped open and was bleeding onto the bed spread. That was only in the spot on her upper thigh, but when his eyes started traveling up them where he saw her panty line, it got blacker and in parts almost blue, and he couldn't help but wonder how much more infected it had to look underneath them.

"This is what can happen when a man doesn't take care of the one he's with, Roy," she told him sadly, his head snapping back up to her face. "It's called an STD," she went on, "There's no cure for it, and I'm going to be honest with you… I'm probably going to die soon." She took the end of her skirt and carefully draped it back over her legs, still wincing at the touch of the fabric on her blisters, and her hand weakly moved for the covers, but Mustang stopped her and caringly reached over the bed where he grabbed at the blanket and put it around her. She smiled down at him and went on.

"Madam Christmas wanted me to punish you, but I just want you to make me a promise, Roy," she quietly said to him. He obediently nodded his head, looking like a man far beyond his years, knowing that whatever request she made he would keep it as long as he lived. "I want you to promise me that when you're a man whatever woman you're with, you'll treat her like a princess, whether it's the woman you're in love with or just a one night stand," she stated. "And when you have little babies, when they're old enough to know what you mean, tell them about me, and what I made you promise. Can I trust you to keep this promise for me Roy?"

Nicole went into a coma a week later and died shortly after, but he never forgot about his promise, and in his adult life he always respected women, even if he would brag about them to his men a little bit.

And now he was Fuhrer, and he was going to have a baby.

That picture of the little white jellybean on a black background hanging on his bathroom mirror was his child being carried inside another person, Riza nonetheless, and it wasn't only the promise he made to Nicole more years ago then he wanted to admit that kept him wanting to be in this child's life.

He grew up having a happy childhood for the most part, but the other kids called him a bastard when they found out he was adopted and a part of him suffered with wondering why no one wanted him. He still didn't know where he originally came from, and though it bothered him less than it did when he was a kid the lack of knowledge still bothered him. He figured it would be more than easy to find out, now that he was Fuhrer. There had to be records on his real parents, but he discouraged himself from digging too far deep into it. He didn't know what would be worse; finding out that his parents died in a fire, or that they just didn't want him. No matter how he looked at it, there was no good reason for giving up a child in the late 1800s.

But now there were bigger matters at hand than finding out the roots of his lineage. Riza had in her belly Mustang's child and he knew what he had to do. She was a strong woman, sure to handle any problem at hand without hesitation, but he wanted to be there with her. It was time to win her back, or rather win her for the first time, which he knew wasn't going to be easy. He knew he loved her and she loved him, but actually putting it into words was something he found exponentially challenging, but he had no reason not to do it now. Since he was at the very top of the military no one could reprimand him for having a relationship with someone he worked with.

It was time to stop being bashful and tell her exactly what he felt for her. His vow to Nicole and the one to himself for never letting another child feel unwanted if he could help it was enough to push him into reality.

He snatched the photo from the mirror, sat down by his house phone, and dialed Cheska's work number.

He was going to have a baby.

Riza was surprised to find an empty desk in the Fuhrer's office, expecting to see him hunched over some paperwork or obsessively cleaning the window's like he did sometimes when he procrastinated, but the room was vacated and seemed to echo much more then it did when his huge personality was taking up so much space.

In a way, she was a little bit happy she wasn't going to be seeing Mustang today. She didn't want to face him after the fight they had the night before, and besides, now she didn't have to strain to make herself look well, which was probably making her feel sicker then she already was.

The reality of the little jellybean being a living thing inside of her hadn't exactly set in yet for her. She wasn't quiet sure of what she was going to do about it, but she knew her three options and looked at them as professionally as she could. It was either terminate the pregnancy, let a nice family adopt the baby after she birthed it, or raise it by herself.

Just as she sat down at her desk Cheska came running up to her, of course with a stack of books in her arms.

"Hello Cheska," Riza smiled, figuring they had become friends the other day, before she passed out.

"Hi, Brigadier General!" she smiled back. "How are you feeling today?"

"Oh, I'm fine thanks." It was nice to have a girlfriend in the workplace, even though she never expected that friend to be Cheska.

"Did they say why you passed out yesterday?" she asked setting the books down on the Brigadier General's desk.

"Oh that?" she replied. "It was nothing. I just had an issue with dehydration and I was out of there within the hour but Fuhrer Mustang sent me home anyway."

"Yeah, he was really worried about you," Cheska said carefully. "You know, he carried you all the way to the hospital! What a great guy, no wonder he's going to do an awesome job as Fuhrer!" Riza cocked her brow at the bookworm. She hadn't known he actually carried her there. It made her mind go back to the fight in the street…

…"I shrugged you off because you mean everything to me"…

Maybe he actually meant it. Was her heart softening now?

"Oh, yeah, that reminds me, he called me this morning to tell me he wasn't going to be in," she told Riza.

"I know, I was in his office and it was empty…"

"Well, he told me that he had some official business to attend to and he requested for you to come to his apartment to help him with it."

The Brigadier General almost stopped breathing.


	8. Chapter 8

******Here's another love scene! Oh wait... maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that! D:  
>Don't worry, this is MUCH more... loving...? then part three, so I think you'll like it! Reviews and faves are always appreciated and I'm finally starting to get the hang of this site, but if you have any suggestions I'd love it!******<p>

He didn't know why he asked for Riza to come over to his apartment, she probably thought he was some kind of pervert or something. The whole thing seemed incredibly stupid and pointless now, as he sat in his living room, still every once in a while glancing at the photo on his coffee table, and burned little gum wrappers and old receipts with his alchemy out of boredom, watching them smolder to nothing in his metal trash can. He knew the science behind the inferno that everyone else thought appeared out of no where when he snapped his fingers, but from time to time he would still feel extremely badass and fascinated by the flames. It was a great weapon against just about any enemy, but if he wasn't using it for anything else, it was also a great past time.

About an hour after the phone call he was starting to get impatient, and he was also out of things to burn which didn't help his nerves. Of course she would come… right?

Technically she had to and if she didn't it would be violating an order from the Fuhrer, but she knew he wouldn't do anything about her not showing up since they were so involved with one another.

He pushed himself off of his couch and started pacing around the apartment, nervously rehearsing the lines he would recite to her if she ever came over.

He made it a point to be as cool as he possibly could when he was working, but most days, when no one was there in his apartment with him, he would allow himself to become momentarily unraveled to remind himself that he was still a human. Humans cried, and laughed, and got angry, and he was perfectly fine letting himself feel enough to experience those things, but when he was a soldier with his men, he wasn't really supposed to be human at all. He was a killing machine, a dog of the military, and he knew his place. He knew very well what he was and was not permitted to feel inside military grounds.

But when he came back home, he was just plain old Roy, not Colonel Mustang, or now Fuhrer Mustang, he was just a regular man, without the personality of the military's pet. He could be composed and imperturbable when he had to, even when he didn't want to be, but he knew it was also important to remind himself that he was still an individual with feelings and a soul: something the military could never take away from him.

He learned to let himself actually cry about something after the war in Ishbal when he really thought he was a monster and didn't know how else to deal with himself…

Of course, he was still the same Mustang at home as well as at his job at the military, and he was by no means a cry baby, but when someone is killing people for a job the things they see are sometimes so intense that if they don't allow themselves to shed a tear for the dead they would slowly go insane.

He stopped and peered down at his unborn child's picture still resting on the table in front of him, and wished as hard as he could that this child would never have to live through a war like he and his mother did in Ishbal. He wished that they would live a life without alchemy, or painful secrets that could destroy an entire city, or a rush to be in the military so they could fight pointless wars they didn't believe in.

It was funny, the thing wasn't even born yet and he was already getting sentimental.

Dead set on the fact that she wasn't coming he plopped himself down on his couch and cursed at himself for being so stupid in the first place, that's when he heard a soft knock at the door.

It was so dumb to actually come over to his apartment, she already knew what the "matter" was, and she knew what he was going to say about it; just get an abortion and be on with it. After all, she knew she wasn't able to be in the military with a baby belly.

She wasn't sure what to do about it though. On one hand, she loved her job and she didn't know what she would do with a regular life like all the other mothers with babies, but on the other hand… it was her baby, or at least it was going to be as soon as it was born, and what if she was going to get attached to it?

He came to the door and welcomed her in, swallowing hard and making a gesture to tell her to go sit on the couch. A moment after she sat down, he came over and sat next to her. They were awkwardly quiet for a moment both of them looking around the room and fiddling with their fingers.

"So," Mustang began as coolly as he could, still not looking at her so he could keep his composure, "a baby, huh?" She glanced over but quickly looked down at her shoes when she saw him not looking back at her.

"Yes sir."

More silence.

"Have you decided… what you're going to…"

"No sir."

Silence again. She shuffled uneasily in her seat. It was a good thing she wasn't hungry that morning or she was probably going to have to throw up again. He coughed quietly before he went on.

"Well, you should know… abortions aren't as safe as people make them out to be these days…"

She again looked up at him and noticed his eyes were fixated on the photograph of their baby on his coffee table. He was already attached to something that was still non existent.

"So, you want me to carry your bastard child," she stated carefully, not thinking out the words before she said them.

"Please refrain from calling my child a bastard, Brigadier General," he said shortly but he quickly found his self-control again. "I was called that for many years. It's not something to be proud of."

The silence again returned to the room. This time Riza broke it.

"I'm part of a scandal now, you realize Fuhrer Mustang."

"I don't care much what people think about my private life, Brigadier General," he replied stretching his back on the couch next to her. "Everybody knows I'm anything but a saint."

"You've got that right sir," she smiled. He finally turned to face her. When he saw that smile, that smile he'd been looking for, for almost three months, he finally felt at ease with her like he did before their whole sexual experience happened. He gently placed his hand on top of hers and smiled back at her, but his eyes were closed and he couldn't see her expression change to something more of a look of sadness.

"We can do this, can't we?" She slid her hand out of the grasp of his, offended by his offer and looked away.

"We?" He opened his eyes, taken back by her reaction and carefully slid his hand back into his own lap. She went on, "You want to be with me because of a mistake like this…"

He hung his head, trying to find what he could say to make her see he loved her despite the fact they were going to have a child.

"Do you really think that's the only reason?" he said after another moment of awkward silence. She turned to face him again, looking straight into her eyes intensely.

"Sir, don't try to make me believe you're ready to be a father," she started. "You can hardly get your paperwork done on time, what are you going to do with a screaming child?"

"And you're no more equipped to handle this than I am," he replied calmly. "You can't pull out your gun and shoot at a baby because they mess their pants and expect them to never do it again." She shot him a dirty look and he smiled sweetly at her as to say; you know I'm right.

"So you're saying we would be horrible parents," she asked more like a statement then an actual question. He again found her hand with his and kept smiling the smile at her that usually made other girls melt at his touch, of course, Riza Hawkeye was not like the other girls.

"Maybe not," he began, "if we raise it together…" His eyes began to drift to her lips, so warm and inviting, as she thought about how sweet he was being. Of course it could have just been the same hormones that made her cry randomly that made her attracted to him, that almost made her… want him. Yes she loved him, but she never wanted to lunge at him like she wanted to now.

Mommies and daddies were supposed to be together, that was just the way the universe worked, and lately she wanted him so deeply sometimes she found it hard to control herself.

He said he wanted her too, and he wanted her because he loved her. This was totally different from the night under the city; she could tell that he sincerely loved her and not only wanted her, but wanted to be WITH her. How could she turn him down when he was being so honest about his feelings (for the first time EVER) knowing she felt the same way?

He brushed away a piece of her hair from her eye and rested his hand on the side of her face, still sure never to look away.

"You're beautiful Brigadier General," he began scooting closer to her so their faces were almost touching. "You're everything…"

Their eyes began to close simultaneously like they had opened together that night when they conceived their baby, only this time there was no fear. There was nothing wrong about this like there was that night. She would let him kiss her this time, because he was the father of her child and without saying a word they knew they were in love.

The warmth greeted her lips again, only this time it was firm and knowing of what exactly they had to do to make Riza melt in his arms. She let herself go as did he, knowing it wouldn't end like the last time, and she wrapped her arms around his neck in a begging for him to never leave her.

He began to collapse on her, pushing her down onto the couch so he was lying on top of her, still kissing her and lightly chewing on her lips which seemed to make her react nicely. There was no going back to the way things were before the war, or before he had become Fuhrer. It was something new and exciting and he was ready for the ride as long as he had her behind him, pushing him along like she always did.

Finally, he pulled away from her and they smiled at each other.

"Let me take care of you for once, Brigadier General," he whispered, moving his face in for another kiss.

"Sir, wait!" she exclaimed before she got too into the moment to mention what she wanted to ask him. He immediately pulled back and looked up at her.

"If you don't want to, it's ok," he assured.

"No, it's not that," she began, "Sir… is this another… business consultation…?" He smiled comfortingly at her and kissed her.

"I'll never ask you for a business consultation again," he whispered tracing her lips with his charred pointer finger. "This is making love."

He stood up and took her by the hand to pull her up from the couch. She looked at him standing before her still smiling calmly and totally sure of what he was doing, and her breathing started to fasten with anticipation. She followed him into the next room where he shut the door behind them.

His bedroom was neat, the bed made perfectly, and not a speck of dust on anything she could see. The blue curtains were drawn over the bay window on the opposite side of it and the whole room was illuminated by an indigo glow, and it bounced off the walls and cast that same radiance on their skin.

Still smiling, he walked over to her, and again his hand began to caress her face, making her flush with nervousness. She could see his eyes focus between her lips and her eyes, not knowing that at that very moment he was swearing that he could almost touch heaven. He was an alchemist who believed solely in logic, but he also felt like being with her like this was the closest to heaven he could ever get.

"Do you want to be with me… brigadier general?" he asked lovingly, eyes becoming hazy and his whole being pushing to kiss her again. "Not just for today…?"

She looked up at him wide eyed wanting so badly to scream yes in his face, but also weighing out the pros and cons silently in her head. He was such a jerk sometimes! He was so stubborn and stupid, and not to mention he was the biggest procrastinator she ever met! Sometimes she just plain hated him for being a big, hard headed asshole who never asked for directions when he was lost and never, besides this one time, showed his true feelings about anything.

But his smile, and the way he looked now, how sweet he was being…

He could be a ridiculously big oafish prick sometimes, but sometimes his sarcasm was called for and in all honesty… she found it quite cute. He was always there to scrape her off the floor if she ever needed it, even though she never did. Now that she thought of it, the fact that he was abrasive towards people made it all the more worth while when he was kind. So he was a big womanizer, but never in all her years of being with him had she ever heard him say a single bad thing about a woman even if she deserved it ten times over, even though he was painfully honest about just about everything else.

If she said yes… would that be the part of him she would see all the time?

She decided to take her chances, figuring she had nothing else to lose. If it was going to be a big mistake, then she would cross that bridge when the water came in.

She pulled him close and took control, now kissing him instead of him kissing her. When they came up for air, he again looked at her, his expression one asking for some kind of verbal agreement.

She laughed a little bit and hugged him tightly.

"Take that as a yes, sir. I thought it would be obvious, but I forgot who I was talking to," she joked lightly as Mustang felt himself smile a smile he probably never wore on his lips before. Maybe it was almost… sincere love.

This time, as they rolled on the bed with each other they found that it was completely different than the night under the city. It was less rushed and almost angry, instead loving and slow. Almost tender… actually completely tender.

He took more time making her satisfied then he spent inside of her, figuring he was in his own room, not a hole in the wall where anyone could see them at any second so they had to finish fast. He let his fingertips explore every part of her making mental note of this moment so he would never forget it, even though he knew it would be one of many.

And when he entered her, her whole body seemed to shiver and she struggled not to scream in pleasure.

Once, on accident of course, she even moaned his first name with no push from him to say it. It made him beam with pride and he kissed her so deeply her toes were beginning to curl.

They took it slow, making love and exploring exactly what those words meant. They wanted to be part of each other now in physicality like they already were in their souls.

She would so anything for him, and he knew it. Now she knew that he would also do anything for her.

It was the deepest love anyone would ever know.

And when that big moment finally came, they screamed together and happily went limp in the others arms.

She was careful to keep her shirt on, knowing the burnt tattoos on her back would hurt him, but they unbuttoned it and let the front of her be out in the open like everything else was.

They lay back to chest now, like they were that night, the position that made everything happen in the first place, but this time they both smiled at the thought, satisfied and pleasured. Mustang kissed her bare neck from the back where he lay with his naked arms wrapped around her stomach, and happily smelled the fragrances in her golden hair that spilled out over her shoulders.

They still couldn't believe that they actually had the other in their grasp.

"Sir…" she began her smile going serious.

"Mmhm," he grunted tiredly, resting his chin on her shoulder and shifting in his position so he was more comfortable. She went on.

"What are we going to do… about the baby?" After a moment, he hugged her tighter and kissed her cheek.

"I already love you," he said as a matter of factually, "It's going to be hard to try to hate any person that comes out of you." She blushed and smiled lovingly at his statement.

He actually said it…

"Of course," he went on sensing the mood was too romantic, "It's also half mine, and I'm damn awesome, so I guess I'll be able to handle it."

She laughed out loud and playfully slapped at his arm.

Yeah, they were having a baby… together…


	9. Chapter 9

******I decided to write a little nonsense part with Roy, Riza and the baby! :D  
>It's not really in character, but it was fun writing nonetheless. Again, thanks for the awesome comments, because you readers basically guarantee that I'll finish and make the whole thing great! I still wish I could thank each one of you personally like on deviantArt...******<p>

Summer came and went, and before Hawkeye and Mustang knew it, it was December and Riza had gained a gratuitous amount of weight.

It was hard for her around mid-October when their baby was really beginning to make an appearance under the coat of her uniform, and she could hardly even get her pants to fit around the midsection of her thighs. Mustang smiled sweetly at her like she was a child as she would stand in his room in the morning huffing and struggling to get her clothes on so they could go to work together.

Pretty soon he had to convince her to take a leave of absence from the military until the baby was born. People were really starting to notice, and he could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out he knew about the pregnancy and still let her stay in active duty.

She knew he was right and with a heavy heart, handed her uniform over to him along with all of the other military issued objects she had ever received. It was almost like she was giving up her whole life for another person she was sure to love, and yet never even met.

Noticing her eyes heavy with regret as she stood in his office with her arms outstretched with her uniform hanging off of them, he laid his hands on top of hers and smiled a crooked grin at her, comfortingly.

"Don't worry," he said to her, "I'll keep them safe, and you'll be wearing them again in no time." She smiled a halfhearted glint at him, kissed him on the side of his lip and walked out. Not knowing what to do or where to go since she didn't have to go to work for a while, she trudged her way back to Mustang's apartment where she and Black Hayatai played with his ball for almost three hours.

At first, they thought it would be better if they took their relationship at a slow pace, and they would treat the other like any other first date they had with others, but there were definitely problems with their logic. For one, no one could see them together. He was the Fuhrer and there were probably cameras following him everywhere. If they saw a picture him with a pregnant woman, and dating her nonetheless, there would be slander, but he was more concerned with an attempted political murder pointed at his unborn child.

He would NEVER let that happen.

The truth was he was starting to turn into a big poppa bear, basically vowing to take any bullet if the gun was pointed at Riza or his baby. It kept him awake some nights, worrying people were spying on them for some reason, maybe because things seemed too… quiet after the war, and he would roll over and have to hug Riza with almost all his strength, silently promising to protect her from anything and everything that even thought about touching her.

The second reason the going slow wouldn't work, was the fact that they both knew how much they loved each other. It took years to get to the point they were at now, and after a while of trying to date, they figured they had already waited long enough to be lovers.

She ended up actually moving in with him almost three weeks after they consummated their love, which made Mustang more at ease to know she was always going to be close to him where he could protect her more efficiently… not to mention he was going to have her company almost twenty four-seven.

It was a cool December night that night in and either of them could get any sleep. Riza was tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable, but experiencing throbbing in her stomach and failing to get any rest. Mustang, knowing that being awake would upset her and he pretended to sleep with his back facing her, looking out his window at the rooftops of the city.

Finally, she sat up abruptly, frustrated and pulled the chain on the lamp on his nightstand.

"Sir, are you awake?" she asked quietly placing her hand on his shoulder. He pretended like he was coming out of a deep sleep stretching his arms out and yawning tiredly.

"Is everything ok?" he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. He looked over at her, staring off into space grumpily, obviously frustrated by her lack of sleep-she hardly got any lately-and he naturally slung an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"It won't shut up," she stated angrily. He cocked his brow at her, confused.

"What?" he almost laughed at how preposterous she sounded. There was no one here who could have been keeping her up by talking…

"You're Goddamn spawn will not stop kicking me, damn it!" she yelled at him, like it was his fault. He couldn't help but smile at her anger, even though he knew it would make her more angry and hormonal than she already was. "DON'T LAUGH AT ME!" she yelled louder. "EITHER MAKE IT STOP OR LEAVE ME THE HELL OUT!"

He shifted in the bed so he was sitting cross legged next to her bloated stomach and smiled down at the baby that was right inside the woman he loved. He always tried to figure everything out in a scientific way, but when he looked down at the other little person inside of Riza, he really thought he was looking at a miracle. Of course, he would never tell anyone. It was a principal! People were going to think he was going soft…

"Let's see if dad can't do anything to soothe the savage beast," he said, undoing the buttons on her shirt to expose her belly. The fabric flopped from each side showing her skin that looked more like a deflated basketball, and he lovingly placed his hand upon it.

"You can say savage beast again…" Riza grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest, "I can clearly see who its father is, keeps me up all night focusing on it just like you did with your stupid paperwork, and your stupid…" She went on, but by that point Mustang was almost laughing out loud at her, straining to keep his composure. She was into the sixth month of her pregnancy, and he had been living with her for about three of those six months. At first he was a little frightened at her raging hormones, as well as he was thanking god for them making her horny at times, but after a while, he learned to laugh at them. If he were on the outside looking in he supposed he would find them funny anyway.

He could feel the baby inside her, rumbling around like it was doing summersaults, and he gripped her stomach firmly, but at the same time gently, now with both hands, one on either side, and leaned in so his lips were almost touching it.

"Are you trying to hear the ocean, sir?" she asked sarcastically. He silently looked up at her and shook his head before he went back to what he was originally doing.

"Holy shit," he exclaimed more of a whisper, snapping away from her stomach, surprised at what just happened. He swore he could feel the entire imprint of an upside down, under developed, baby foot push into his cheek from inside Riza's stomach.

"What!" Riza exclaimed back, concerned. "What happened?" He sprung back up into a sitting position and made his hands cling on to her stomach again.

"It's kicking!" he whispered excitedly. "I felt it! It kicked me in the face!" Riza smiled at him, still examining her stomach with all amusement of a child on Christmas morning.

"I see it beat me to it…" she joked, but he didn't bother listening to her this time. Instead he continued to somewhat play with the unborn child.

"Come on…" he said quietly at Riza's belly, "You can do it again. You're strong, just like me…"

Riza coughed, waiting for him to mention her also, not exactly content with the fact he was giving her absolutely no attention whatsoever.

He looked up at her briefly, but then got right back down to coaxing the baby to kick again.

"Ok, AND your mother…"

All at once, when he placed his hand right below her belly button, he felt the same pressure as last time, only this time it stayed stationary for a moment. He closed his eyes and imagined the little hand he felt against the palm of his.

He counted the fingers: one… two… three… four… five…

And as fast as his amazement was sparked, the little hand disappeared and the rumbling and summersaults beneath her flesh finally stopped.

"You did it, sir…" she said placing her hand on top of her basketball stomach. He could feel her start to get angry. "So, the damn thing kicks me for hours and wont stop, and then you just press your face up against it, get kicked twice and it goes to sleep? I have to be honest… sir, I kind of hate you right now."

He smiled and kissed her deeply.

"What was that for…?" she asked, calming down a bit like she always did when he kissed her. He grabbed her hands and held them on her belly in his.

"Do I need a reason?" He could see her coming out of her temper tantrum, but she made it a point to still look irritated at him.

"This doesn't make me any less mad at you sir," she stated.

Still wearing his prideful smile, he lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes.

"Well, I guess you don't have to love me right now if you don't want to," he said, his back now towards her in the same way it was before she woke him up. "At least you can get some sleep."

"Yes sir," he heard her say as the light was flicked off again and he felt her body lay back down next to him.

They both sighed heavily together, like they were about to drift off to sleep, but Roy doubted he would rest at all because of how excited he was about his baby. He was instantly in love with it from the moment he knew he knew he was going to be a father and he felt like the little hand against his was his child telling him that they felt the same way.

It really was amazing.

"Sir..." she began, her back still on his.

"Yes," he muttered back, still pretending he was tired.

"I've been thinking... you don't have a lot of work here at the moment... right?"

"Not really..."

"And the city is starting to feel..." she paused, looking for the right words, "stuffy, lately..."

"Is that so?" he disagreed with her, but let her go on.

"Well... I've been talking to Miss Rockbell in Risembul... a lot since I haven't been able to work..."

"Does she know... about us?" He asked concerned. She knew she wasn't supposed to say anything about their relationship or their baby. For all he knew, his phone lines could have been tapped.

"I've written to her about it, but we've never spoken on the phone about anything that had to do with the baby," she replied, hoping he wouldn't be too mad. "I've told her about our situation and she assured me she burned my letters right after she read them like I requested."

He was silent, but she heard him sigh loudly at her.

"Sir... I had to talk to someone about it..."

"I know, but you should have told me before sending them," he said now straining to keep his anger and paranoia where she couldn't notice it. "What if someone else had read them? How are we to know?"

"I'm sorry sir..." she whispered after a minute. He sighed again, figuring there was no point in being mad at her, and now he just had to worry about protecting her even more. The news about them could have been anywhere by now. Of course he knew they could trust Winry with their affairs, but the people who delivered that mail...

"Go on..." he said to her, waiting for her to continue what was on her mind.

"Well, Winry's told me that ever since her grandmother died and Edward and Alfonse have been recovering in her house she feels like... additional... adult supervision would be beneficial to them..."

"You want to play mommy at the Rockbell house?" he asked sarcastically, rolling over to face the back of her head.

"It would be good practice, knowing what your kid's going to be like," she replied, thinking how true her statement was. "Actually, they'd probably be a lot like Ed, come to think of it."

He propped himself up on one shoulder.

"My child will be much better looking than Fullmetal, thank you very much!" he exclaimed. "And they'd be a whole lot taller too..." He knew somewhere out there Edward Elric was having a temper tantrum in his head, knowing he was being referred to as small.

"I really think it would be a good idea..." she went on, "The fresh air there would be good for the baby, and it would get me out of the house... maybe even give you some time to move your stuff into the Fuhrer's mansion..."

"Hey! I've been working on it!" he replied. "Look, I've already started packing!" He pointed over at a big cardboard box that was in the corner of his bedroom, labeled Mustang - clothing.

She rolled over and sat up to look at it.

"That's one box," she stated. "And there's only one glove in it..." His eyebrow twitched.

"Well... it's a start..."

"Is it still going to be a start when we bring home another person and have nowhere to put them?"

He exhaled in frustration and rolled back over to face out the window.

"Fine!" he exclaimed. "Next week, I'll make arrangements to have you driven off to visit Risembul... but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

He knew she would be safer there, no one to take pictures of them together and no one was there who wanted to hurt them. Central was too dangerous, and he knew it, but that didn't stop him from wanting to keep her close, but maybe a little space would be good for her. She was always a free spirit, and she was in the apartment a lot lately...

He tried to tell himself that Fullmetal would take care of her, even though he had a bum leg and arm that were still recovering from when he had gotten them back, and a brother who needed constant care like a young child, but he was never one to let anyone get hurt, especially his own friends like Riza. He had given up the military status when he had found what he was looking for and returned to the only home he knew, but he was the same young kid that Roy worked with and Riza loved like a brother, and he knew he could be trusted.

He was one of very few since he had become Furher.

Riza grinned in the bed next to him and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"Thank you sir," she said sincerely, before she put her arms around him and finally fell asleep. She was delighted that she was going to see her friends again, as well as excited, and Roy continued to lay there, grabbing at her hand and trying to tell himself she would be ok without him...


	10. Chapter 10

"Yeah, thanks a lot, Mustang," Havoc exclaimed sarcastically, sitting in his wheelchair and putting Mustang and Riza's groceries in a brown paper bag. His parent's store was still in Xing, but after Havoc talked to Mustang about how bored he was, being away from central so long, Mustang was able to pull a few strings and give his family another store located near central that Jean could run. He was another person that could be trusted with the information about the baby and their situation, and they were always happy to see him, especially Riza, who had been more on edge and bored then she had been lately, so they made it a point to visit his store at least once every other day, even if it was just to pick up a stick of gum.

A few times, Mustang really thought the lack of air in his apartment would ultimately lead to the demise of their relationship, or worse…

"That physical therapist you referred me to really works wonders," he went on waving his hands around in the air to convey his sarcasm. "Look, I can already wiggle my left pinky toe, and it's only been, oh I don't know… a half a year?" Mustang smiled at his friend as Riza slipped away for a moment and came back with a box pizza, a jar of pickles and a jar of peanut butter.

Mustang and Havoc stopped their conversation and looked at her crooked headed.

She looked around, embarrassed, and put the things down on the counter.

"Don't ask, ok?" she finally said. She tried to keep her pregnancy cravings out of the sight of Mustang, and sometimes she'd eat late at night, but he'd been catching her consuming the weirdest things he'd ever seen in his life lately, and couldn't help but shake his head and walk away. One of the times he remembered so vividly was when he rolled over in bed smelling bacon cooking on the stove, and peered over at his clock that said 2am. He went to place his hand on Riza's shoulder in the bed next to him, not realizing she wasn't even there and groggily flopped on his side on the bed like a drunk.

He trudged out in the kitchen where he saw her placing about ten slices of bacon on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a jar of mustard in her other hand, and a jar of pickles and olives sitting open next to her.

For a moment, he literally just stood there watching her, seemingly not noticing him at all standing behind a corner in the wall, wondering if it really was an alien inside of her that made her to eat that way…

"Sir!" she exclaimed finally spotting him out of the corner of her eye. Her face went red and she froze, horrified he had seen her in this state.

He forced a smile and walked over to her, remembering this was the woman he loved, and he would stick with her no matter what she chose to eat.

"Don't worry about it," he assured kissing her forehead, careful to stay away from her lips to divert himself from tasting anything else she had eaten that night, "It's my kid, you're bound to do some weird things."

She hugged him and smiled, believing he didn't have a problem with it, but he gritted his teeth and hoped the cravings would stop soon.

Havok shrugged and placed the pizza, pickles, and peanut butter in the bag with all the other things.

"You seem to be on edge today," Mustang smiled picking up the heaviest bag so Riza wouldn't feel like she had to carry it.

"Yeah," he replied, sadly. "I quit smoking." Mustang and Riza's eyes almost popped out of their heads.

"WHAT!" they both exclaimed in unison.

"My new girlfriend says she's allergic to nicotine and can't keep seeing me if I keep smoking," he told them using air quotes around "allergic to nicotine" and frowning in withdrawal.

Both Riza and Roy had the same expression on their faces thinking the same thing; yeah, that's going to work…

"Anyway, how are you two love birds doing?" he smiled. Mustang and Hawkeye gasped and looked at each other in fear. Mustang's expression swung over back to Havoc, angrily.

"Don't say that out loud, Havoc!" he exclaimed in a whisper.

"Hey man, chill out!" Havoc said trying to protect himself. He always forgot he was supposed to keep them a secret. As far as he was concerned it was actually kind of natural for them to be together, and anyone else who knew them the same way he did would have known Mustang was the father anyway.

Riza picked up one of the lighter bags to please Mustang, even though she knew she could have easily carried one of the heavier ones with her pinky finger. Of course she knew their relationship was supposed to be hush-hush, but she didn't have to like it. For the first time, she had a man in her life who seriously loved her and she wanted everyone to know it. Sometimes she actually wished he hadn't gotten the presidency so they wouldn't have to be so secretive about things, because it just made it harder to love each other.

And she wasn't sure if they were real emotions or hormones, but when he was so overprotective of her she actually kind of hated him. Of course he was a good man, (surprisingly) an incredible lover, (not so surprisingly) and she knew he was going to be an amazing father to their child (that part blew her mind). The good always outweighed the bad with him but his paranoia did get a little annoying.

It was like he forgot who she was when she decided to be with him for their own sakes as well as the sake of her baby. He was always helping her do things he knew she could still do herself, and giving death stares to anyone who even looked at her the wrong way.

Didn't he know she could still take care of herself? She took care of both him as well as herself for years, the only thing he really had to do was care for his baby and let her take care of herself, or at least ease up a little on her.

Of course she could understand his worry. She was part of a scandal and she was in a weakened state. If the wrong person found out that the leader of his country was going to have an illegitimate child, the results could be disastrous.

And it was pretty cute how sometimes he would hug her randomly and promise he would never let anything happen to her. His voice was completely serious when he told her this and he was probably the only person she would actually believe in making a promise like that to her.

She decided she would look at it as cute, as well as slightly annoying.

He only protected the ones he loved after all, unless being ordered to do differently, and he protected her above all else.

"Sir, its ok," she interjected into his and Jean's argument, "There's no one here…"

He looked back at her and then carefully scanned the store. Realizing she was right, and feeling like a complete idiot for yelling at someone for no good reason, turned back to his friend, who now had a smile on his face that told him; "I told you so!"

"It's almost closing time," Havoc told him, "nobody here but you and me." Mustang shot him one more look of anger, said a quick goodbye and pulled Riza out the door into the pouring rain.

"Damn," he grunted pulling his collar up. Riza coolly strolled down the street beside him, the rain not bothering her in the least. "I hate it when it rains…"

"Only because you're useless in it," she finished his thought. He shot her a look of frustration.

"I'm not useless…" he started, "I just can't do alchemy in it…" He clenched the still dry gloves in his pockets.

She looked up at him and smiled a crooked grin at his statement.

"Well… you're useless without your gun but you never see me drawing attention to that!" he was grasping at any comeback he could. Why was it that he could tell everybody else off with one good sarcastic statement but when it came to her it was almost if her sarcasm… matched his! The worst thing was that she didn't even have to say a thing to get back at him, that one look got him all the time.

"I always have my gun, sir. I don't lose it in snowstorms like you lose your weapon in the rain." The baby started rumbling around in her stomach like it did whenever it rained. The doctor had told them that it was much stronger then it should have been by the sixth month and though it was a good thing to have a healthy child inside of her, it was going to cause her some pain from time to time since it kicked more often then other babies.

She stopped walking and clenched onto the fabric on top of her stomach in pain. These weren't happy kicks as she came to realize. The thing wasn't even in this world but it was always sure to let its mother know whether it was content or not.

Mustang stopped dead in his tracks and looked back when he realized she wasn't by his side. Seeing her stationary in the middle of the sidewalk in pain made him run over to her as fast as possible. He just thanked god he wasn't too far ahead.

"What's wrong?" he exclaimed placing one hand on her shoulder and the other on her stomach worriedly where he felt the baby kick and punch and rumble around inside of her like a circus freak.

"It's normal," she said back, still in pain, "the doctor said it was fine if this happened. Don't worry about me!"

"Sorry," he said nonchalantly, helping her to walk forward, "That's my job, don't bother questioning it."

It was funny, the weather they had been having lately. A minute ago it was almost like a hurricane and now it was a light sprinkle. That's what it had been like. One minute it would be pouring rain like it would never stop and the next minute the sun would be out.

She felt a brush of air run past her face, only it was unnatural, like someone was running very fast and generated enough air to hit someone with. It came with a light swishing sound and almost a low grumbled…

laugh…

"Sir, stop!" she whispered gravely. He stopped in his tracks. "There's someone following us."

He made himself look like they were having any conversation a normal young couple would have and shot her a fake and believable smile, even though his heart was pumping like never before, his paranoia coming true. He had to stay strong for Riza, and the baby. He'd acted brave before, only this time he was actually frightened something might happen that he couldn't stop. It hadn't stopped raining yet and he didn't have a gun…

What was scarier was the fact that after she had told him that, he felt the same breeze on his face and knew she was right.

"How can you tell dear?" he acted. She knew his game and she'd played along before.

She smiled back and clung onto his arm, looking up at him with her big brown eyes.

"Oh just wait a minute, honey," she said, trying to make herself sound as sexy as she could, reaching into her purse where she had her small gun, and leaning in close for what seemed like a lover's kiss, only when her lips touched his she gracefully slipped the barrel of her pistol into the top of his pants.

The baby finally quieted down, knowing that if it wanted this plan was to work it needed to stay still for a moment.

They both felt the unnatural wind again, this time closer to them as Mustang reached for her hand that still hid the gun and wrapped his hand around it, pushing her into a small alleyway conveniently located right behind them. He pretended like he was pushing her hand down to have… a little fun, and moaned a bit for effect as he slipped the gun in the inside pocket of his coat.

They looked up at each other, getting ready for the final stage, and stared into each others eyes like lovers did, only they were both waiting for the breeze to come again.

It came. He swung the gun out gracefully, covering Riza and let out one bullet. A scream, loud and low pitched, and they both peered over at their stalker.

He almost looked like…

He smiled an evil grin and looked down at the bullet wound that had only been a scrape against his arm. He put a finger in the blood and licked the red liquid tenderly, breathing in loudly. The confidence radiating off of this man, sure to make Mustang waver, kept him standing still as a rock.

He tried to think of this as some kind of business, and nothing to do with his baby or Riza. If he thought about them for even a second with this threat right in front of him he was sure to lose his cool. This was all about focus and he couldn't afford to lose any of it.

"Good job Fuhrer Mustang," the man said taking a step forward. Mustang still stood, holding the gun in its position unwaveringly and looking straight into his eyes…

his squinty eyes…

"I've never been shot before," he continued. His voice sounded familiar… Riza figured he could be no older than Ed…

He went on, still smiling malevolently at them. "You really are as impressive as people say you are." Riza saw him look at her and cock his head as his eyes traveled down to her stomach. She flinched and tried to cover it with her long white coat, as his smile got broader looking back up at Mustang seeming to subtlety shield her. He was beginning to put two and two together, wondering how an opportunity like this could fall right into his lap.

Here he was, in front of the man he wanted to overthrow, and it just happens that there was a woman he obviously cared about, probably carrying his child standing right there with him, close enough to grab.

It couldn't possibly be better, could it?

"Sorry I have to do this to you, Fuhrer Mustang," he grinned. "Must sting… losing something you love."

Faster than Mustang could react, the man looked like he was going to go into a sprint and he shot blindly at him again as soon as his body went into a blur and he disappeared. It was quiet for a moment before he felt the breeze against his face.

He heard Riza's scream float down the alleyway, as she too turned into the same blur and disappeared with the man.

His heart dropped to his shoes and he gripped the gun so hard his knuckles turned white as he shot down the alley after them. He felt like his whole world was crashing down beneath his feet.

He could hardly breathe or think about anything but her and his baby, feeling helpless and praying the rain would stop.

Maybe he couldn't keep his promise.


	11. Chapter 11

The man pushed her hard up against a wet wall at the back of the alley, and she could feel her baby lurch forward and backward inside her. Even with the pain on her back and how uncomfortable she was with this stranger so close to her, she still was more worried about her child's well being. It kicked lightly as if it knew about her concern and she was able to focus on her abductor again, who now had a knife to her throat.

He grinned at her with the eyes of a psychopath, still holding her firm against the wall, and lovingly watched the knife as he lightly caressed it along the skin on her cheek. She flinched and snapped her head away from him, flaring her nostrils at his scent in hatred.

Of course she was strong, and she tried to show no fear, like she always did in this kind of a situation, but she was without her gun and her men…

…and where the hell was Mustang?

The man peered back up to her eyes as he slowly and gently traced down her body with his knife; down her neck, between her breasts, and her belly button where he looked down at her stomach for a moment and then back up at her, letting the blade rest there like it was his destination all along.

She glared at him with all the hatred a person could hold beaming through her face as her heartbeat fastened in horror.

She couldn't help become flustered. This was her child, and there was a man holding a knife to it.

Riza found it quite hard to react to being pregnant at first. She looked at it more like a business relationship and less like an expecting mother, but as soon as it started actually kicking at her and she could feel it living inside her… things started to change.

Sometimes (she'd never let anyone know it, but) she did feel like she was doing something important by carrying another person inside of her. She heard people talking about her having some kind of a special glow that they couldn't quite understand, and when she felt it kick, she couldn't help but marvel at how beautiful she had to be. She even dared to think about the fact that Mustang would actually smile when he looked at her! In all the years they had worked together she had never actually seen his face twist in quite that way. It was like in all their years he had never actually been happy, and now with one look, one kiss… one touch, he would seem to melt in joy.

That in itself was a miracle. Whenever he felt it move she watched as his face lit up with love, and she couldn't help but fall deeper for him. She'd never noticed how good looking he actually was before he smiled at her like that, and she could never help but smile back.

She would never let that slip through her fingers because of some random man. That smile was too important. Her child was too important. Mustang was too important… she supposed she could call it family…

She breathed loudly at the man before her, as his grin widened like he was some kind of animal.

"You must be former Brigadier General Riza Hawkeye," he hissed at her leaning in further, still playing with the knife on her shirt. She flinched again but said nothing. "Fuhrer Mustang's number two, his right hand man…" he fiddled with the knife some more, again peering down at the baby that had began kicking violently at the inside of her.

He looked back up at her as he finished his thought. "…and now, the mother of his child."

She had to stop herself from spitting in his face.

"Are you not?" he teased, sadistically.

"What do you want?" she asked, a little too loudly gritting her teeth in anger.

He scoffed, stepping back, sure to leave the knife on her stomach so she wouldn't dare run away or try anything stupid. He'd heard of her shoot to kill attitude, and knew about just how brave she was, but that didn't matter much right now. It didn't matter who she was or what she'd done in her past, no mother in her right mind would put her child in danger like that.

She submissively stayed still, making a mental note that she should always carry at least two handguns in her purse instead of just one like tonight. Then she made an even bigger mental note to never give her gun to Mustang! He was a great shot when it came to his alchemy, but she knew he wasn't exactly schooled in handling a weapon like she was. She should have taken the shot at the boy, because though she knew it was a miracle for Mustang to even hit a target's arm moving at that speed, she figured she would have probably been able to shoot him straight between his eyes.

They agreed to do it like that for the safety of her and the baby, but maybe it would have been a better idea to just do it herself.

"I'm sure you've met my brother, Brigadier General," he went on. She was silent, trying to figure out who he could have been related to that she knew. Of course she didn't know many people, basically living her job and not having much of a social life.

She scanned him from foot to head, noticing nothing much familiar about his black pants, and muscular physic, the yellow shirt, or the pattern that was printed on it. She saw his long black pony tail that was a bit frizzy from the humidity in the air, and his straight face that looked like it held no cheekbones at all… and then she moved up to his eyes where she struggled to see his pupils.

Finally it snapped, and she looked up at him in confusion as well as understanding.

Ling Yaou, now fitting the role of Emperor in his country; that was this man's brother… but why would he want to kill her or Mustang? What did he have against them? They were nothing but kind to Ling, and Mustang was a good friend to him, but that was no reason to cause harm to them.

Edward and Alfonse were the ones who played the main role in keeping him safe. If he wanted to hurt someone for helping his brother become Emperor, she thought it would better suited to go after them…

…Of course, that would be no better when it came to ethics. She would have gladly taken a bullet for those boys, but she had to focus on the fact that this man wanted to end a life before it even started living. He had to have a good reason

In her own mind, her baby, and Mustang, took presidency above all else now that the brothers were safe and out of the military, but sometimes she did think about them and wonder if they were alright. Al was in the most crucial part of his recovery, and could have been doing better from what Winry told her. A part of her still worried about them, and then she would look down at the inflated stomach and decide she really was ready to be a mother… she already was in one sense of the word…

He went on.

"My baby brother gets the throne before me…" she could see him start to get angry and peered down at the knife nervously as he kept it still, but gripped the handle of it remorselessly hard. She didn't want to risk him getting even madder when he was like that… there was too much to put on the line. She stayed still and made sure to not let her facial features present any hint of concern as she let him go on.

"Ling Yaou… he even has a stupid name… that asshole…" he said. "He shows up to the palace with the secret of immortality, and rather than actually GIVING it to his own father, he just lets him die! He just pissed and moaned about; 'You don't want to have that curse' and right before our father died he proclaims my little brother new emperor… because of how WISE he was! And where the hell do you think that leaves me?" he was yelling in her face now, but she stayed staring straight at him like she would in academy before she became a soldier. She was used to yelling after all, being in the Military so long.

"What do you want?" she repeated softer now, her hormones making her get the slightest bit emotional. His eyes softened just the slightest bit at her, but he tried to remember why he was there in the first place and decided to indulge her.

"What do you think?" he asked, like it was a real question stepping forward so he was closer to her again. "I was born to lead. I have royal blood pulsing through my veins and I don't intend on letting it sit there, while I have no one following me."

So it was political. Of course it was…

"If I can't lead MY country, well… yours is still under development. An up and coming democracy, right?"

She said nothing and he took it as a yes.

"I can make it anything I want… and all I have to do is get rid of the man in charge…" He looked like a thought just popped into his head and he laughed out loud. Riza figured there had to be something wrong with him. His proposal was downright unattainable.

"I guess I could have done it a minute ago, slit his throat and you would have never even seen me… but I suppose I like to watch my victims… suffer for a while."

This boy was completely delusional! Even if he had… she didn't even want to think about it… but if he had actually killed Mustang he was more likely to go to jail then anything, and if he HAD actually gotten away with it there would be hardly any chance for him to become Fuhrer anyway. He obviously didn't know much about how things worked in their military, and he probably knew even less about their government.

She looked around the alleyway, waiting for Mustang to come running up toward them to save her, but found it hard to see anything with how dark it was. The boy kept talking about his plans to overthrow them, but Riza began to ignore him when she seen the outline of the side of a long coat waving from behind a crack in the wall.

He wanted to kill him where he stood. No one should have EVER been able to touch Riza in the same way the boy touched her, as long as he could help it. That was enough to make Mustang's temper almost boil over completely, but he knew he needed to stay quiet and wait for the right moment to strike as he stood in a corner to conceal himself and listened to the squinty eyed boy talk about overthrowing the government.

He didn't even breathe, swearing he could feel himself begin to explode in hostility as he gripped her gun in his hand trying to think of a good way to sneak up on the captor so he could kill him without being noticed, and at the same time not hit Riza. He wasn't a very good shot, and he knew it, and though he knew he was better than most, he still couldn't be confidant enough to take a long range shot at a target that stood right in front of the woman he loved.

If he could only torch him… if only it weren't raining…

That's when he held his hand out and looked up at the sky, finding he was so angry he couldn't feel that the rain had stopped falling.

Now it was his time to start grinning malevolently. It was show time. He slipped his gloves out of his pockets and snapped them on his hands, thinking about how long it had been since he actually used them. He was lucky he even kept them on his person anymore since he felt like he really didn't need them much, but he was smart to have them tonight.

He crouched down on the wet ground, careful not to let his glove touch the puddles and cautiously took aim at the boy, as he felt Riza's eyes rest on him. He couldn't let her distract him. He couldn't risk losing his concentration and hitting her, so he just smiled confidently at her and nodded his head, trying not to let his eyes look down at her belly. He would definitely lose it if he looked at the knife, and there was no telling what he would do.

The boy was inhumanly fast, and Mustang knew he had a knife resting against Riza's stomach. If he took a shot at him and missed… he would be gone and Riza could have her stomach ripped open before the smoke even cleared. The first shot had to be just a distraction, one to slow him down and make him drop the knife, and then he could be torched to death if Mustang decided fit.

He stared at the back of his kneecaps for a second and then…

*Snap.

The knife fell from his hand and clanked onto the ground with a loud metallic thud as the boy yelled and staggered to the side, trying to catch himself with the wall, but he eventually fell hard and grabbed at his badly burnt legs.

Riza, still against the wall, let out a loud breath of relief, not noticing that she had hardly taken a good breath from the time she was abducted till now.

"Try running away with no legs," Mustang scoffed walking up to him, still on his side and writhing in pain, reaching for the knife. They finally started realizing just how young the boy was while he was on the ground like that, of course Mustang couldn't kill him, it would be immoral, but at least he would have a little fun with him. He did deserve something for how stupid he was, thinking he could threaten the mother of Mustang's child and expect Mustang not to try to kill him.

"Oh," Mustang said looking down at the knife as the boy's fingertips were almost on the tip of its handle. He bent down by him and smiled as he picked it up. "Looking for this?"

The boy stared at him silently as Mustang held out his hand at him with the blade in his palm, almost offering it. After letting his eyes move from the knife to Mustang's smiling face, he reached out for it. That's when Mustang stood straight up, grabbing it away from him and walked over to Riza, where he placed it in her hand.

They both looked down at the boy as he swallowed hard and his face turned pale. He really was just a kid, just a young stupid kid who knew nothing about the world. Mustang smiled, still obviously mad at him for what he had done to Riza, but bent down in front of him instead of just killing him on the spot.

"How old are you, boy?" he questioned. There was a moment of awkward silence as the boy's eyes shifted all around the alley, trying to divert from Mustang's face, but he finally croaked out an answer.

"19…"

"And your name?" A frown grew on the kid's face and he stayed quiet as he breathed, loudly at the older man, like a teenager being punished. "I asked for your name boy, unless you prefer me to call you that…" He let out one more breath of frustration.

"Shang Yaou…" his voice was a whisper now, but it soon grew to a shout. "Does it even matter? Just kill me and get it the hell over with!"

Mustang laughed.

"You'd enjoy that wouldn't you?" he said nonchalantly, getting back up to a standing position so he towered over him. The boy hung his head like the child he was, and Mustang's view softened at him just a little. "Go learn a few things about the world before you try to run a country," he began, a little stronger now. "You'll get there one day, today's just not it."

Shang looked up at him and nodded his head in understanding. He wasn't a killer… he probably would never be, but he found it hard to believe he was still alive. Mustang had no good reason to not kill him and all the reasons in the world to end his life right there. It made him a bit nervous thinking with just a snap of his finger…

He watched as Mustang nodded at Riza, her eyes floating from his face to Shang's, and they began to walk away.

Mustang stopped as Riza kept pacing down the long alley to let her get just a little bit farther so she wouldn't hear what he had to say to Shang as a parting gift.

As soon as the boy tried to push himself off the ground, he saw Mustang's head turn just slightly to look behind his shoulder at him.

"Remember boy, the only reason you're alive right now is because I didn't feel like killing you in front of a pregnant woman," he said sternly, not raising his voice in the least. "But if I ever find that you're threatening my family I wont give you the satisfaction of dying at the licks my flames."

There was a pause as Mustang looked straight ahead and began walking after Hawkeye.

"I'll be sure to only burn you enough to disfigure you so horribly no one will even be able to look at you."

Something in the Fuhrer's voice made him wholeheartedly believe his statement, and then if it weren't bad enough, he decided to put three more words in to harden the blow before he left.

"That's a promise."


	12. Chapter 12

They didn't even speak as they walked through the darkness back to Roy's apartment. A few times she looked up at him and tried to touch his hand, but he kept looking straight and lightly shrugged her away.

She wondered if he was mad at her… she stuck to the plan they came up with if they were ever followed, and she never even told the boy anything. There was no reason to be angry with her, but the way he stared at nothing in front of them and was completely silent, and abrasive toward her, told a different story.

He didn't look in her eyes when he opened the door to his apartment and waited for her to walk in, but as soon as he stepped in after her, he slammed the door behind himself and stomped into his room where he threw a suitcase onto his bed and began to violently toss his clothes in it.

"Sir…" she whispered almost to quiet for him to hear, still standing by the door. Was he leaving her? Why?

"We're going to Risembool," he stated, looking up at her only for a moment. "We're leaving tonight."

"We can't just…"

"DID IT SOUND LIKE A QUESTION?" he yelled at her, breathing heavily from the other room. She began after him. It was probably a bad idea to get in the line of fire with him like this, but she felt like she had no choice.

"Sir, you're being irrational!" she exclaimed grabbing his shoulder as he continued messily stuffing clothes into the brown suitcase like a mad man. He swung around and looked at her with pure anger burning through his eyes.

"I AM BEING _EXACTLY_ AS _RATIONAL_ AS ANYONE ELSE COULD BE IF THE MOTHER OF THEIR CHILD WAS ALMOST KILLED!"

"I WAS _NOT_ ALMOST KILLED!" she yelled back.

"It was close enough!"

"He was just a boy! He couldn't hurt me even if he wanted to!"

"WELL, HOW THE HELL CAN YOU BE SURE THERE'S NO ONE ELSE OUT THERE WHO COULD?" He exclaimed, turning away from her and going back to work on the suitcase. "I WONT TAKE A CHANCE WITH YOU, KNOWING THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE, WHO WOULDN'T HESITATE PULLING A TRIGGER WHEN IT'S POINTED AT YOUR HEAD, OR SLITTING YOU OPEN WHEN THEY HAVE A KNIFE AT YOUR NECK! "

She was still as she watched him for a moment, unknowing of what to say or do. He was telling the truth and she knew it. The cat was really out of the bag… the boy knew about the baby, and word could have gotten spread through all of Amestris by now. Anyone who wanted to cause harm to Mustang probably knew his weak spot now; her, and most of them wouldn't think twice about it before they killed her.

Premarital sex was already frowned upon in their time era; premarital pregnancy was like treason to some, and now that they knew about the Fuhrer being a part of both… there was no telling what some people might do.

And he was scared. He wasn't the type of man to run away from his problems, but he also never made permanent ties with a woman who couldn't stand and fight with him. She figured he would run like a coward if it were running for her, while he was confidant enough in himself to fight like a man if he were only fighting fiends who didn't want to hurt her.

Now he was going to have a family… he had never had that before… it was new, and frightening, and the thought of anyone going after that family probably wormed itself through his brain and ate away at him every second of everyday.

Her eyes rested on his hand that gripped the side of his suitcase, and after a moment she came up behind him, reached out, and laid her hand on top of it.

She could feel his whole body go even tenser than it was before, and his hand coiled up into a fist under hers, but she didn't let go. It was finally silent, the rustle of clothes only a memory of a sound, and their yelling quieted. His body seemed to shiver against hers, and she listened as he took short shallow breaths, almost as if he were crying with no tears. He was trying so hard to not come undone with her there, and for the first time, it didn't work.

He snatched his hand back, spun around, and pulled her into a violent hug, his one hand wrapping around her back and his other letting his strong fingers twist around the hair on the back of her head. Her arms naturally wrapped around his midsection as her head was pushed into the crook of his shoulder, and she closed her eyes in understanding. Of course they both knew the boy couldn't (and wouldn't) hurt her or the baby, but that didn't make the ordeal any less upsetting.

He had lost so much in his life, and now that he had something so precious in his grasp… she was sure he couldn't help but think; how am I going lose this?

She felt him shiver against her and keep breathing in the same shaky way he was before as their long embrace continued, and she gently rubbed his back. He knew there was no judgment coming from her, and he swore that this was the first time another person had ever made him feel almost… safe, without using a weapon of course.

He always thought it was impossible to feel safe with just a touch, but at the same time, until now, there was no one around who would hold him with that intent anyway.

That was something a mother would do, and Madam Christmas wasn't a woman who would even give him words of encouragement other than; "great, you're in the military, don't die, alright?" He supposed it aided him in being the hard ass he was now with a never give up look on life… but it was still nice to experience complete and pure affection from another person.

"I… I can't…" he whispered to her, stopping for a long breath. "I… won't… lose you…"

She smiled, still resting on his shoulder and shook her head ever so slightly. She had to admit, it was kind of amazing that she was seeing a more vulnerable side of him that she didn't even know existed. She didn't think he was any less of a man for crying, she loved him more for feeling comfortable enough to even show her any sign of openness at all.

"I'm not going anywhere, sir," she whispered back, lovingly.

He pulled away then and looked straight in her eyes. His face was red and he knew it, and there was one single sign of wetness of his cheek, but he didn't care. She loved him, and he knew it. She would do anything for him.

She reached up and wiped that wetness away as he smiled a crooked grin and then rested his forehead on hers.

"Take that as an order, Brigadier General," he said, quietly before kissing her lips, and making love to her like never before.


	13. Chapter 13

******OMG! 24 reviews? Thank you so much everybody! I wasn't expecting people to like it this much... but... THANKS! It really means a lot to me!  
>And I still don't own FMA, just a reminder.******<p>

He found himself staring at the back of her still clothed shoulder (she never took her shirt all the way off when they made love) as he opened his eyes at the sun that had begun spilling through the window the next morning, making her hair glow in the light. He propped himself up on his elbow in the bed, thinking about just how much he loved her, how beautiful she was right now, and how lucky he was to have a woman like her in his life, no matter what the circumstances were.

With a strong gentle touch, he reached out and brushed away a strand of hair that fell across her eye so he could look at her more clearly. A moan escaped her throat at his touch, and he snapped his hand back, thinking he woke her, but she just squirmed a bit and rolled away from the window so she was facing toward him, her eyes still closed and moving under her eyelids.

He figured she was dreaming about something beautiful, because he watched as a sleepy grin grew on her lips and she moaned again, a happy moan.

He smiled back at her and lightly kissed her forehead. Let her dream, she deserved it. Anyone who was as amazing as she was to him, deserved to get away from the world for a moment and live in beauty.

There were moments like this that confirmed that he loved her. If he could wake up every morning of his life listening to her breathe, and watching her smile in her sleep, he knew he would be a happy man. He wished the child in her belly would be just like her… even though he knew for a fact that just coming from her would make them perfect anyway.

His hand caressed her stomach and he smiled when he felt nothing moving inside, instead of Riza's diaphragm that gently bobbed up and down with each breath she took. He knew that since she was still asleep, the baby was too.

It was amazing to him that one little person could live inside another for a whole nine months, and how much love it must take for her to let something she didn't even know change her so drastically. That must be why humans usually fall in love before they have sex. They must have to know they're at least capable of feeling love for another person before they give birth to something that requires it every second, of every minute, of every day.

Of course he understood all the elements that went into the makeup of a human body, but love was something intangible, as well as something he didn't even believe in until about a month before the conception of their child. Love was something no one could describe and yet as soon as someone experiences it for themselves, they can never forget it.

He supposed that was why human transmutation was impossible. You can never recreate a human soul, because love must have been the main part of it. You could have the most elaborate scientific equation for the alchemy of the bones, skin, and brain of a human being, but there was nothing in an alchemy textbook that explained the equation of love.

You just weren't human if you didn't grow in the belly of your mother…

…even if you didn't exactly know who that woman was...

He smiled again and kissed her once more on her cheek before he gently pushed himself off of the bed so he wouldn't wake her up, walked over to his closet where he grabbed his uniform, and quietly closed the bedroom door behind him as he made his way into the living room so he could get dressed.

Today was going to be important for both him and Riza, even though she didn't know it yet. After what had happened the night before… how much it irked him and made him fall apart…

He was done living a secret, and he intended on doing something about it.

Black Hayatai looked up sleepily at Roy as he slipped on the sleeves of his heavy blue jacket. Knowing that someone was up and he could eat breakfast, he stretched out his front paws, yawned, and strolled over to Mustang where he sat right in front of him panting happily.

"Morning, boy," he whispered, stopping before he finished buttoning up his uniform to bend down and pat the dog on the head. "You hungry?"

Black Hayatai trotted behind Roy as he tiredly trudged into the kitchen to pour some dog food into the metal bowl and set in on the floor next to the other bowl that held his water. Roy kind of just stood there for a moment looking at the dog as he sat on the floor staring back at him in confusion. Usually Riza would feed him and before he was able to eat he had to do a series of tricks for her. This was way too out of the norm for him, and he wasn't sure of exactly what to do.

"This is where you eat the food…" Roy said to him sarcastically. Black Hayatai glanced at the food bowl hungrily, but quickly looked back up at Mustang confused. "Whatever," he shrugged, turning around to grab a piece of paper and a pencil from the kitchen counter. "I fed you. I did my part. If you don't want eat, that's your problem."

Black Hayatai whined quietly, looking between Roy, leaning on the counter and writing something or another, and the food that was tempting him on the floor, baffled, before finally nibbling at a few pieces of kibble, feeling like he was doing something totally wrong.

Roy smiled down at what he wrote; rereading it to make sure it sounded fine before he scribbled his name at the bottom of it, buttoned the rest of the buttons on his coat, and silently slipped out the door for work.

Riza woke up about two hours later, frowning as she found an empty pillow beside her. She wasn't used to not seeing him first thing in the morning, and was even less used to having to wait until nighttime to see him at all, but she knew it was needed. Of course he had to work, and she had to stay hidden.

It was just the way things had to be for now.

She tried not to bother herself about what was going to happen when the baby was born. They couldn't hide a child away from the world for all their lives, they needed to go to school and play with friends… hell, even make friends! They can't do that inside a cramped apartment, or even in the confines of the Fuhrer's mansion. People were going to find out sooner or later, she supposed they were aiming for the "later" after they had thought out and prepared a plan to keep them safe.

Black Hayatai trotted in the room happily, sensing Riza beginning to wake up, and jumped up on the bed next to her to lick her hand that hung off to her side.

"Good morning to you too, boy," she smiled petting his head, and yawning. She sat up and stretched, figuring she was getting up WAY too late, and her dog was going to be a rambunctiously hungry freak if she didn't feed him soon. Of course Roy wasn't going to take on that responsibility, and besides, it was one of the only things she was still able to do around the apartment, anyway.

She felt her baby wake up and forcefully kick her.

"I guess you're hungry too," she exclaimed, placing her hands on her stomach. She tried to push herself off the bed, and found it harder than usual, because her belly just got in the way sometimes. Of course she… loved the thing inside of her… but it made going from a sitting position to a standing one quite a chore, and she knew it could only get worse from where she was now. She had watched herself grow to a weight she once vowed never to grow to, seen little stretch marks develop on the sides of her stomach, (and one or two on her breasts… she was lucky Mustang hadn't noticed yet… he'd have a field day with them…) and felt hunger for strange things (even sometimes inedible things) radiate through her body almost all day long, and she was only at the sixth month!

Imagine what it was going to be like when she hit nine months… and she knew being Mustang's kid it would be coming into the world at least a week late.

Ok, she was going to explode before then. She always felt it rest almost right up against her lungs like that was its permanent home until it came out. Pretty soon it was going to be suffocating her, she knew it.

She pulled out a carton of eggs and milk from the fridge, along with a bowl from the top shelf over his stove. There were only two eggs in the carton, since the ones they bought last night were still somewhere outside that alleyway, probably all broken or stolen by some homeless people.

She shuttered thinking about that boy. He must have had some problem in his mental status… there was something too farfetched about him…

…a part of her wished Mustang would have just burnt him to death right there, actually, she couldn't believe he didn't. He seemed so overprotective of his child, and the first person to hold a knife to it gets nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a warning?

She thought about it as she cracked the eggs and stirred them together with the milk in the bowl. If she could have, she would have torched him until his flesh melted off of his body and he was cooked so well that the sewer rats had a delicacy for a meal of his face, but maybe those were just her hormones.

Before she knew it she was stiring the eggs so hard that they were beginning to spill out onto the counter. Well, at least they were well scrambled...

The baby kicked at her again, trying to edge her on to eat something as she reached over the counter to grab a dish towel to wipe up her mess. Instead her hand rested on a piece of lined paper.

What?

She picked up the note and smiled at the horrible penmenship Mustang called his own. She figured that's why he never wanted to do any of his paperwork... his handwriting looked like that of a twelve year old, and that was being generous.

iDear Hawkeye,  
>Fed Black Hayatai so you don't have to. You're welcome, by the way.<p>

And you might want to turn the radio on at about 10am, I already have it on the right channel.

~Love, as always  
>Mustangi

She noticed the way the way it seemed like he went over the word "love" about two or three times and it was subtly bolder than all the other words. Of course he wouldn't have wanted her to know that, and it didn't look like he ment it to be that way, still, it was quite cute...

Ten o'clock? She peered over at the clock that read 9:55am but was also about three minutes early. She hurried over to the radio that he left on the coffee table in the living room, completely forgetting about the eggs despite her hunger, flicked it on and sat down on the couch.

The baby kicked again in frustration. She knew it was hungry, and she knew she could have listened to the radio while making breakfast at the same time, but the way the note sounded and the way he wrote it in that slow way he used when he really didn't want to say something, made her believe that it was going to be something she needed to sit down for.

The radio announcer swooned about how great the weather was that day, for being a morning in December when she flicked it on, and Black Hayatai came trotting over to listen with her.

"And now, we have a special announcement from our Fuhrer, Roy Mustang," the announcer croaked out, like it was a surprise to even him. She listened as the radio made a clicking noise, obviously the sound of the mic switching hands. She hadn't known anything about an announcement, and he definitely would have told her about it if it had been important. She looked down at Black Hayatai who had again let his head fall on the floor next to her in a desperate attempt to take a nap, while the baby kicked at her.

"That's right, that's your father," she said to it, trying to get it to calm down.

"Good morning, Amestris," she heard Mustang's voice over the radio. She began to listen intently, as did the baby and Black Hayatai. "Don't worry, this announcement is not regarding a war, we are still in political and militarily peace."

It was like the entire country breathed a sigh of relief. He went on.

"I'm here to comment on some rumors that have been circulating through the city about my personal life as of late." Shit! What was he freaking doing? There was no reason he had to make his life an announcement for all to know. She held her breath, knowing what was coming next, almost feeling like she was unable to move or think. "I've heard of some people saying that I am going to be having an illegitimate child, and have been living with the woman who is carrying it. I'm here to say that those rumors are completely true."

His voice didn't waver at all and he sounded completely calm about what he was saying. Riza almost couldn't believe it, it was almost like it was a dream she was waiting to wake up from. She continued to sit there with the same blank expression, still not knowing exactly what to think about it yet. She listened to him vacantly.

"I encourage you to not look at this as a measure of my character, or use it to question my ability as the leader of your country. Of course I am a human and I've made mistakes, though I haven't made many of them in my life." Of course, he has to mention how awesome he is. Typical Mustang. "The woman who is carrying my child is not a random girl I had only just met, but a beautiful woman whom I have loved for many years, and one day, hope to marry." She heard his voice get just a little bit softer as he mentioned marrying her. He was hardly ready to be a father… he definitely wasn't ready for a wife.

His voice got stern as he sent a warning.

"And though I am very happy at the moment with this woman whose name I've decided to keep a mystery, I am aware that some people might want to cause harm to her for any reason what so ever, and I would persuade you to reconsider that. I want everyone to know that if she is ever attacked, I will strike at the perpetrator as I have vowed to strike at any terrorist of our country. I want you all to understand that though it will be quite untraditional for the time being, this is my family and I would appreciate it if you will support my decisions regarding my newly found family life."

The baby began kicking again, feeling its mother begin to boil over in anger. She never thought this man could ever be so stupid! People knew EXACTLY where to strike if they wanted him to hurt now, and not only did that put his title as Fuhrer on the line, but he was also putting his own child in harm's way! Was he forgetting that it was also Riza's child? Was he REALLY that self envolved?

"But there is one matter of business that I think the people of this country should know," he said, cutting into Riza's thoughts like a knife. "I will be vacated in an undisclosed location for the next few months until my son or daughter is born, so I can tend to my important personal matters a little more thoroughly than I have been. Since the country is in a plateau for the time being, I don't see the harm in leaving my post here in Central, but if anything were to happen, I assure you, I have arranged to be contacted immediately, and in that case I will be forced to return to my seat where I will lead you to the best of my ability."

She had heard enough. Before he could even say goodbye or go onto the next subject in the announcement, and before she had even bothered to eat breakfast (which made her baby very unhappy, by the way) she flipped the radio off, ran into the bedroom where she quickly got dressed, clipped a leash to Black Hayatai's collar, and briskly walked out the door of his apartment with her dog by her side.

"Sir, forgive me for speaking out of line but…" Brigadier General Fuery squeaked from the other end of Roy's office as he watched Mustang clean out his desk and dump everything into a duffel bag.

"Furey, you know I don't care," he moaned tiredly, not even looking up at him. He knew it was no use of course, Furey would always sort of fear him.

"Well…" he went on in that small voice he had. How did he get promoted to Brigadier General? "Sir, are you sure you made the right choice… in doing that announcement, I mean…?"

Mustang scoffed, smiled, and sat down, finally diverting his eyes from his bag and all the things in it.

"Let me tell you something, Brigadier General," he began, "A true Fuhrer, and a true man, is always sure of himself, even if he might not be."

All of a sudden, almost as if Mustang's wise words were supposed to be ruined, the doors to his office both swung open and crashed up against the walls making the loudest thud they all swore a piece of wood could ever make, basically hitting Furey in the face. Riza stormed in, dragging Black Hayatai behind her, her hair a mess from not brushing it or pulling it back, dressed in the only pants that still fit her, and a pink button down shirt that showed off her bulging stomach.

She walked right over to him, completely disregarding Furey, watching that deer-in-headlights look on Roy's face.

"I apologize in advance, sir," she said to him, swinging her hand back and hitting him hard across the face.

His hand gravitated up and placed itself on his lip, as he looked away from her in confusion. It didn't hurt much, but it was more of an act of surprise. He frowned back up at her as she held the same angry expression at him.

"Furey, get out," he stated, staring up at her from his chair. Obediently, he slipped out of the room, still rubbing the side of his face where he was hit with the door.

"Who said you could make announcements about my life for all of Amestris to hear?" she said unemotionally. He had seen that look on the faces of just about every strong woman who had a reason to smack him. Madam Christmas almost always had that look. He swallowed, not letting the nervousness show on his face as he stood in front of her to make him feel not quite as small as he felt still sitting in his chair.

"They had to know what was going on," he said nonchalantly, silently thanking God she didn't have her gun anymore. "They had to know why I was leaving."

"You weren't going to leave! That was the point! We were supposed to keep this a secret damn it!" she yelled back.

"Well, how do you think they were going to react when a random child shows up saying they're mine? Do you think we can keep them a secret forever? You've got three more months, Riza."

"You could have at least talked to me about it first," she said quietly. "This involves me too! I mean damn it Roy, you're just so self centered sometimes and-,"

"Wait," he stopped her to place a hand on her shoulder, and look into her eyes softly. "You called me Roy." She tried to say something but the only things that came out of her mouth were stutters and small squeaks. The last time she called him by his actual name was probably back when they were teenagers…

She all of a sudden forgot why she was mad at him, or at least felt some of the anger melt away suddenly replaced by her own embarrassment.

"I meant… sir…" she tried to recover herself. He stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. Even though she was much bigger now and he couldn't exactly touch both hands behind her back he still found her incredibly attractive.

"No, you meant Roy," he whispered.

"I-I'm sorry, sir…" she replied turning her head down toward the floor.

He lightly placed his fingers under her chin to position her head so her eyes were peering into his.

"Don't be," he corrected. "Riza…" She could hardly breathe knowing he had just said her first name…

They stood there and stared at each other smiling, knowing that they were walking into a new era of their relationship. It was damn scary… but in a way, they felt like they were both ready.

Finally, he pushed her away and took a step back, making his face go serious.

"We'll talk more about this later," he exclaimed, still unable to wipe the smile from his lips, but speaking in a more military tone. "Go home and pack your things, we're going up to Risemboul tonight. I've already talked to Winry and Fullmetal about it, and they said they were ready for us whenever we were ready for them." Black Hayatai whined up at Roy from his feet. "And yes, Black Hayatai can come too. They said Den needs a playmate anyway." The sad expression on the dog's face turned to a look of pure joy. Road trip!

"Yes, sir," she replied, but suddenly stopped herself. "I mean… Roy."

He let a small laugh escape his throat and turned around to look back at his bag.

"I'll see you at home," he said to her from over his shoulder. "Be ready to leave as soon as I get there."

She smiled, nodded, and slipped out the door with her dog, finally at ease enough for the hunger pains to come back and the baby began kicking at her again.

Roy couldn't stop smiling in his lonesomeness, feeling like the room was much bigger than it was when she was in it with him. He picked up a picture frame from his desk, not paying attention to the picture inside of it, but it fell out of his hands and landed upright back on the desk when he heard a voice as clear as day wisp behind him from the door.

"So, you finally got yourself a wife, eh Roy? Told you it was about time…"

He swung around to face the door to see no one there but a bug crawling on the wall.

With the smile returning to his face he turned back around and scooped up the picture frame with Maes's picture in it, nodded in understanding, tapped the frame, and gently laid it in the bag on top of the rest of his things.


	14. Chapter 14

******So... this part is kind of short, I know, but it's really just something to lead you into the next part, which is SO worth it, I promise! Don't hurt meh!  
>EXPECT A FLASHBACK! :D******<p>

As soon as Mustang came home from the office (which was MUCH earlier than usual-about five o'clock in the afternoon instead of nine or ten) Riza had already packed their bags full of clothes, and other necessities for the long road trip. She wasn't looking forward to being in the car for a long period of time, especially on a bumpy road. Being on smooth roads for any short time span already made her head spin, and a queasy feeling arise in her stomach, but she knew that the destination would be worth it. It felt like forever since she had seen the boys or Winry, and visiting them would be beneficial to everyone involved.

Not to mention, that the recent phone calls Riza and Winry had been having were suggesting that Al's recovery was going downhill. She didn't really talk about it much, knowing that Riza didn't need the extra stress, but once or twice she mentioned that when he first came to the Rockbell house he was using crutches, and was walking almost everywhere with the help of her or his brother. Now, she said that he hardly ever stood up from his wheelchair, and lately he hadn't been eating much at all so he was starting to lose weight.

It was also worrying that every time she called, she would only hear Edward's voice calling a greeting of some sort at her, but she had NEVER heard Alphonse in the background.

If nothing else, it would put her mind at rest knowing he was alright with a firsthand account. If there were another problem… well… at least she and Mustang were going to be there to help. Two kids couldn't take proper care of another sick and possibly depressed one.

Leaving in a kind of haste, they ate a quick dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before stuffing everything, including Black Hayate, into Roy's surprisingly small car where they very much drove off into the sunset.

Riza was already starting to feel ill with the very first bump the car hit, and it was only fifteen minutes in.

It was pretty silent for the first hour, Mustang a quiet driver (he didn't like driving anyway, but he couldn't get anyone else to do it for him, because Riza was the one who usually drove him places) and Riza trying as hard as she could not to look out the window and also attempting to keep her nausea a secret.

The sun was still out, but it was about five minutes from setting, illuminating the moving road in gold and red. She knew Mustang probably hated it even more, having to drive right now, but there was also no one else going anywhere on the road they were driving on, so it could have been worse.

She looked up weakly at him, probably thinking she was asleep. Outside the driver's side window, she saw a leggy brunette woman with big green eyes dressed in her regular street clothes standing by the side of the road, and she couldn't help but watch as Mustang's eyes followed as the car past her.

"Sir, I'm sure you haven't forgotten, but I'm still sitting right next to you," she said grumpily, her stomach ache aiding to her discomfort. He glanced over at her with a smile on his face and then repositioned his eyes so they pointed out the windshield.

"I know," he replied. "I love you very much, and I would never leave you for another woman, but remember I'm not dead either!"

She turned away, feeling a bit hormonal, and propped her head on her hand as she closed her eyes. She wasn't going to risk having to have Mustang pull over on the side of the road so she could throw up from all the buildings passing by her at too fast of a speed. The bumpy road was almost too much as it was.

"Are you sure about that?" she asked innocently.

"Sure about what?"

"Please," she began impatiently, "be honest with me, sir. You can't tell me you don't miss your exaggerated love life from when you were a bachelor. And now you're stuck with some fat lady for life, who's probably never going to bounce all the way back from this," she exclaimed gesturing down at her inflated stomach. The truth was, lately she had felt a little bit insecure with her body from all the changes she had been going through. Maybe Mustang wouldn't love her as much anymore… "Why wouldn't you want to be with another woman?"

"You're making me out to be some kind of man whore, Hawkeye," he chuckled.

"Forgive me for being insecure about things but…" she began turning back around to face him, still staring out at the road, "weren't you?" He almost laughed out loud.

"I haven't been with quite as many women as you would think," he said still laughing a little. "Would you like to know how many?"

"Only if you want to tell me," she said. He grinned over and casually held up three fingers at her. She rolled her eyes in disbelief as he focused back on the street in front of him. "That's a number I can't believe, sir" she blurted out shaking her head.

"Oh?" he exclaimed raising his eyebrows, "and when do you think I've had the time for a long term relationship while I was first becoming a state alchemist, later fighting in the Ishbalan war, trying to find and kill the thing that murdered Maes, and then helping fight the father of all Homunculi? Oh, and not to mention that in between all my down time, I was also in the military sitting on my hands and waiting for the next war to break out."

She scoffed in disbelief. "I was there. You had a date almost every week."

"Well, of course I dated!" he exclaimed. "There had to be some part of my personal life that I could still call my own, and I'm not going to lie, I had some fun times, but I only actually slept with three different women. And yes, that does include you."

"Really?" She was more than surprised hearing that there were only two other women out there who had been with him like she had. For all she (and everybody else) knew, he had a new woman in his bed every week, and he could have if he wanted to. Any woman who liked men wanted him, and every man who liked women wanted to be him. Riza couldn't find an actual reason he wouldn't take advantage of his blessed looks and smooth demeanor to have some fun with a random girl. He didn't seem to have many morals, so why not?

"I grew up in a whore house," he stated. "I've learned to respect women, and have also learned that in most cases, sex should come after love, not before." She looked at him crooked headed; she was learning so many new things about him lately.

Black Hayatai yawned from the back seat and repositioned himself so he could sleep more comfortably.

"I've only loved two women in my life; my first from academy, don't worry, it was a stupid little thing that only lasted less than a month. But then… it was you."

"What about the other one, sir?" He cleared his throat and breathed out loudly, his eyes turning a little angry as he peered out at the road, now intently.

"Remember when I was drinking a lot after Maes died?" he grunted. She nodded at him, dreading the thought of how destructive he was then. It was definitely a dark place in his life. "She's the reason I stopped drinking all together, let's put it that way."

She sunk down in her seat, figuring she had said too much. She didn't know what it was like to wake up next to a random person and not know where they came from, but figured it must have been traumatizing if it made him actually change his behavior. He was so god damn stubborn, almost nothing could make him change his ways! Now if there were only a way to make him actually do his paperwork…

She reached over and laid her hand on his knee, supportively. When he seen it there he took one of his hands off the steering wheel and placed it on top of hers.

"I don't mean to be too sentimental, but I think I might have been waiting for you," he said, making her blush just a little. She was finally starting to see what other women seen in him. He was always sure and smooth with everything he said. She was starting to find that it wasn't only just a good thing when it came to the battlefield, it also made him undoubtedly attractive. He smiled down at her and kissed her forehead when they came to a red light.

"You know, I knew I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you," he whispered.

She thought it was just a crush…


	15. Chapter 15

******This is literally my favorite part so far. Even though there's no lemon in this one, it's just so... perfect-ish, at least to my standards, and I don't know, I must have had the most fun writing it, but I hope you like it as much as I do!******

There was a boy coming?

An actual… _boy?_

Not like the ones she only saw when she was asleep; the ones with light brown hair and dark blue eyes, who held her and kissed her in her dreams. Not like the perfect, but still imaginary, boys who wanted her and no one else, and always knew exactly what to say to make her feel beautiful, even though she was one of the most awkward fourteen year old girls you would ever meet.

This was a REAL boy, who probably wouldn't be interested in her in the least. He was probably going to be like all the other boys in her neighborhood who made fun of her for always wanting to play baseball with them, and were mean to her because she acted more like a boy than a girl. She even wore pants… girls weren't supposed to wear pants.

Girls were supposed to cook, and clean, and wear dresses because… well, just because! That's what a girl was supposed to do!

At least that's what all the other girls did in the neighborhood at the dawning of the 20th century, but Riza Hawkeye wasn't like other girls. She climbed trees, skipped stones in the pond down the road from their house, and even once, when she was six years old, tried to cut her hair like a boy because it got in the way of her activities. When she was younger, her mother and father tried to make her wear dresses, and she pleased them for a while, but after a little bit, she tore them on purpose and stained them in the most disgusting substances she could find. After a few were completely ruined, they gave up with their efforts and let her wear what she wanted to wear; boy clothes.

But of course, that was when she was a child.

Now, she was beginning to blossom into a woman, skipping over the part of being a little girl completely. She still liked playing boy games and telling jokes that only other boys thought were funny, but it was the way she was seeing them that began to change. Once she only seen them as playmates, but now, she wanted to play with them differently.

Instead of giving them high fives and smashing her knuckles against theirs to see who would bleed first, she found it as a surprise that she was more interested in the thought of holding their hands.

The hair that she once cut, and after it grew back was tied in a tight bun, now she let down and allowed to frame her shoulders in long beautiful waves, that she tried as hard as she could to keep clean and smooth. Her body was changing too, and she was undeniably a young woman with a beautiful slender frame and small breasts that were just starting to show their appearance under her shirts, which the boys (being boys) couldn't help but notice.

She wasn't ugly at all, in fact it was just the opposite, and any boy would have been happy to be with a girl like her, but she had a reputation. It was too late for her to want to be a woman instead of a boy like them. She had tried to play with them basically all her life, and be a boy in almost every way (besides those few pieces of equipment she lacked) and they didn't understand that her way of life was starting to change, along with her body. They all had a nickname for her, and there was hardly anyone who even called her Riza anymore, besides her family.

Since she wanted to be a boy, they called her Rake. It was once a name she was proud of, like she was really a part of things and could fit in, but now it was more of an embarrassment than anything. She tried to show them she was a girl, wearing formfitting clothing that once belonged to her mother, and going as far as shaving her legs and wearing a skirt that only went past her knees.

She was hoping they would call her by her real name and compliment her on how beautiful she looked, but that didn't happen at all. Instead they said things like; "Rake's in a dress!" and "Rake, you look stupid! Put some pants on!" Then they thought it would be funny to throw dirt and rocks at her to show her how a real boy plays.

She ran all the way back home, and flew onto her bed where she cried for an hour, silently vowing that once she grew up and lived her own life, she would never let a boy talk to her like that. She would go far away where no one knew her past and meet a man who liked her legs when they were in a skirt, and never EVER called her Rake.

Wiping her eyes and looking down at the stupid skirt that caused all her pain, she made a decision that day. People were going to hate her. She didn't care at all. If they were going to hate her then why not give them a reason? She liked the way she felt in her girl shirts and skirts, and she was going to wear them if she felt like it. She decided that she was going to stop being ashamed of who she was. She might have still been that same tomboy, but she was going to start looking like a girl, not for them, for her.

If those stupid boys wanted to be jerks about it, then let them. After all, they all knew she could wrestle better than any of them, and they also knew as soon as she got a slingshot in her hands she was basically lethal.

The thought of being an old maid no longer bothered her much. It was better than being with any of the boys from her neighborhood anyway, but she still thought about the boys in her dreams, and she couldn't shake the feeling that, someday, she wanted to be _with_ someone.

And now there was a new boy coming, a boy who knew nothing about her stupid nickname, or how short her hair was when she was a young child. Of course, it was stupid to think about a boy liking her before she had even seen him. It was stupid to think that any boy in real life would even like her at all.

She thought about it as she sat at her kitchen table, snapping the heads off of green beans so they could be cooked for their supper. That's when there was a knock at the door.

Her eyes scanned around the house to see if she could spot her father, but then remembered he told her he would be in town running a few errands.

Riza stood up and smoothed out her skirt, making sure there were no bean pieces on her clothes and walked over to the door, thinking it was some man from the group her father was associated with looking for him. She didn't think anything of it other than knowing she would probably tell them to come back later.

She snapped into reality as soon as she opened that door and there was a boy, about a half of a step away from being a man, standing right in front of her. He didn't look like the other boys who lived around the Hawkeyes.

_Not. At. All._

He had jet black hair that was cut just a little bit longer than other boys she had seen, and eyes so intense and strange looking she couldn't tell exactly what nationality he was. They were so dark blue or green they might as well have been black, and she couldn't help but stare at them. He was about a foot taller than her, a straight body and muscular arms that, though they were under a black overcoat, looked like they could wrap around her about fifteen times.

That would be nice. Fifteen times?

He was kind of… perfect, even though he looked nothing like the perfect boys in her thoughts. She figured that he was too perfect for her to even picture before she saw in real life. Those other boys that still mingled in her dreams were nothing compared to this man. They weren't even worth a second glance.

"Hello," he said to her, a smooth low voice, smiling down at her face. She was almost too beautiful for her small body. He couldn't help but notice the glimmer of innocence in her eyes, and how different the golden color looked in them. Had he ever even seen that color in another girl's eyes? Of course not, if he had he would definitely remember her. This girl standing in the doorway, with a black tee-shirt and green flowing skirt was just a child. He had to remember to keep that in mind and promise himself that he wouldn't try anything for his own pleasure, even with the attraction he already felt for her right now.

After all, she couldn't be older than fifteen years old, and he was just over seventeen. He would never want to take that innocence away from her, but there was no harm in _thinking_ about it, right?

He wondered; did he ever even _have_ that innocence in his eyes that she had in hers? If he had, he definitely would have felt differently when it was taken away but the truth was; he couldn't even remember losing it in the first place. In fact, he could hardly remember anything from his childhood, when he was supposed to have it. When he was a child and had first come to Madam Christmas's house, and someone mentioned his old family, they would always tiptoe around him, like there was something in what they were saying that would upset him. Little did they know, the four year old Roy Mustang didn't remember anything about those two imaginary figures he should have been missing so much. He supposed he had already lost that childlike innocence, that still glimmered in this girl's eyes, before then.

He was damned if he wanted to deliberately take it away from her. He was damned if he wanted to take that away from any girl. He decided that's what masturbation was for; the girls in his mind never got hurt or lost anything from him touching himself.

Unknowing of what he was thinking about, she wondered… was she… melting?

"H-Hi," was all she was able to squeak out, though she had the look of complete composure on her face. _Don't scare him away, you idiot!_ "You must be the boy who was going to study alchemy from my father."

He nodded politely, and stuck out his hand at her for a handshake.

"Roy Mustang," he introduced himself still smiling. She didn't know that a smile like that spreading on his lips would one day be few and far between, but she still made a mental note of exactly how he looked, as if she would be lucky to see him smile like that again. He was so… handsome.

Would she take his hand? Was she going to explode first? Probably the second idea…

"Riza Hawkeye," she replied, figuring not accepting his handshake would be rude, and she lightly placed her hand in his.

It was like a spark went off in both of them as soon as they touched.

It was strange, like nothing she had ever felt before. She knew she was hardly breathing now and she couldn't have been more nervous about how her hair or her face looked in the light of the sunset, but at the same time, she was almost completely composed and felt, safe with his strong calloused hand on her hand, weak and smooth. It was almost as if they fit together like two puzzle pieces and both of them knew it without one single word being said.

He felt the pang of strong attraction for her unlike any other girl he had wanted before. It was so strong that he actually wanted to kiss her right there in the doorway, but that's not what a gentleman does with a woman he had just met, and he was a gentleman. She was beautiful, and her hand was soft, but he knew nothing about her, even though he felt like he did. She was still forbidden. His master (in the near future) was her father, and he had to remember that he was there to learn, not to pick up a girl.

"I suppose if you're Master Hawkeye's daughter, I'll be living with you for a while, Riza," he said, breaking the silence between them, much too abruptly either of them to adjust to it, and realizing he sounded _way_ too happy about it.

Riza, all of a sudden, pulled herself together and took her hand back to smile up at him.

"Well, if that's the case, I hope you're a very good house guest, Roy Mustang," she joked sweetly, as she stepped away from the door and welcomed him in.

As he walked into the small, decrepit living room, still trying to hide his small grin that crept out of the corners of his lips, he came to the realization that he was more excited about getting to know Riza than he was about learning alchemy, and he had wanted to learn that for almost his whole life!

He wasn't one to fall so easily for a girl, and knew he was a boy who could successfully play hard-to-get, but this girl was different for some reason. She already made him feel shy, and under confidant, and he wanted to know exactly why.

He had to get to the bottom of it. If he were going to live under the same roof with this lovely woman, he wanted to know everything about her. He wasn't a sucker for romance, or a believer in the four letter word that started with an "L"-that one word he probably would never feel for, or say to anyone-but once or twice the thought crept into his mind…

Maybe, just maybe… she was… it.

"Forgive me sir, your story was sweet but," she began as Mustang concluded his story and smiled out at the dark road, the sun completely swallowed by the night, "You were thinking about… touching yourself to me? And you didn't even know me yet?"

He looked over at her with a smirk on his face.

"It's not as bad as what you were thinking," he stated. "I was thinking about something as meaningless as masturbation, you were planning out our wedding."

"I was also a fourteen year old girl who had no real friends. You were the only boy who ever gave me any attention at all," she said quietly, remembering just how true that statement was. "You were… _special_." She wasn't used to giving him compliments like that, even though she had wanted to tell him that ever since that day when they first met.

After a moment of awkward silence between them she heard him let out a small chuckle from the driver's seat.

"Sir?"

"Hm?" he peered over at her with a smile still on his face. Why was he smiling so much today? She almost never saw him smile at all.

"You were laughing." He looked out the window again and shook his head.

"I was just remembering why I almost immediately thought about sex," he began, "other than the fact that I was a teenaged boy and that's almost_ all_ I thought about." She waited for a moment for him to say something, but he just stopped and continued to let out one or two chuckles about the memory he had in his mind.

"And that would be…" she coaxed him on, curious about what it was.

"You're not going to like it," he warned. She stayed silent waiting for him to tell her. He took a deep breath, and looked over at her with a complete look of seriousness on his face.

"I could see your nipples, if you really must know," he stated, naturally, like there was nothing to be ashamed of, and turned away from her, before the look of horror spread on her face.

_"WHAT?"_ she was finally able to make out.

"Yup," he went on, "You definitely weren't wearing a bra, and from what I remember… you must have been thinking about something sexual too."

"I WAS FOURTEEN!" she exclaimed, the baby kicking again. "I-yes I WAS wearing a-wait a minute! How did you-," she stammered. She swore she never felt so violated or embarrassed by him in her life!

It was almost as if she were that young, under confidant, outcast she was when she was a teenager all over again.

"I was seventeen," he replied calmly. "I liked a pretty girl, looked in her eyes for a minute, and then moved down a bit… you know I've always been partial to breasts." He stopped as she could only squeak out something he could hardly hear. Her face was probably so deep red it was a shade of purple by now.

He had never seen anyone get to her like that and he found that it was quite funny to see her squirm. Now he was just playing with her.

He looked back over at her with an evil grin on his lips. "Can't say you didn't leave an impression on me," he said. "You were remarkably… perky."

After a minute of not knowing what to say to him, and cursing him in her head, she slumped down in her seat, and crossed her arms over her chest, looking away from him so the daggers in her eyes wouldn't pierce his eyeballs.

"Of course you would remember something like that," she spat quietly. _"Pervert!"_

"Don't take it like that…" he started carefully, realizing he might have actually hurt her. "I was just having a bit of fun; I didn't mean anything by it. I love you for more than your breasts, you know."

"Well that's all fine and great, _SIR!"_ she didn't know why she emphasized "sir" but all her emotions were mixed up anyway and she didn't take the time to figure it out. "But now I realize that the only reason you even gave me any of your time, was because you seen my breasts. _That's just great!"_ She exhaled loudly and continued to pout away from him, when she felt him rest his arm around her shoulders.

"Even if I hadn't, I still would have thought you were the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life," he whispered, making her believe he meant it.

"Sir, I'm still mad at you," she said, though she felt herself begin to melt a little at his warm touch.

"And I still love you," he replied sweetly, pulling her over so her head rested on his shoulder.

She again exhaled, knowing how much he meant what he said, knowing that he was just a kid (they both were then). She wondered why he was the only one who could get her to not be angry at him that quickly. He pushed her buttons and then somehow was able to basically turn back time, and make things right again.

"You're lucky I don't have my gun, sir," she said wrapping her arms around his waist, and feeling surprisingly sleepy.

"I know I am," he replied.

They were about three hours away from Risebool, three short hours to be wrapped in his arms, three short hours to feel safe, and drift away from the world.

Mustang felt her slowly go limp in his grasp, and about a half an hour later, pulled over to the side of the road where there were no car sounds, and the stars looked like they could have touched the ground out in the horizon. He pulled the key out of the ignition, and knowing she was dreaming, stared out at them with her still breathing softly on his chest.

He quietly played with his keys as he looked up at those beautiful stars, feeling small and insignificant, pondering how lucky and undeserving he was of someone like her. Of course he had to piss her off somehow, he just decided to bring up how he had seen her breasts because he didn't want her to know what he actually felt that day.

For all she knew, he was just some man who came to their house and had found some kind of sexual attraction toward her. He didn't want her to know that not only was he thinking about touching himself, he was also thinking about how beautiful she was, how brightly colored her eyes were, and how soft her skin was. He didn't want her to know that he could hardly take his eyes off of her when she walked back into the kitchen as he waited on the couch for her father.

And above all else, he didn't want her to know that every time he did actually pleasure himself on nights that the thought of having her seemed too strong to bare, (which happened more often than not, especially at the beginning) no matter how hard he tried, he could think of no one else but her. The very thought of her face and those beautiful eyes drove him perfectly mad. Even when they got older, and he used masturbation for a stress relief in wartime, she was the only one who entered his mind. Even when he had that other girl who tried to love him, every time he entered her, or pleasured her, he couldn't help but think about Riza, what it would feel like to be entering_ her_ pleasuring _her_ That was why they broke up, and that poor girl never knew it.

He always knew she was the one, and in a way he was almost happy there was a baby to get them together. It was still surreal, and some nights when he woke up beside her, he would really think that the last few months with her was a dream. Sometimes, he would even pinch himself as he realized she was still sleeping next to him, genuinely believing he was dreaming.

It was just that she was always so far away, no matter how close to him she might have been. He had chased after her, and restrained himself, and found there to be no other outcome than living without her for the rest of his life. She was forever forbidden, and yet…

Yet, whenever he looked over at her sleeping next to him, he found that he _finally had her_. The chase was over, and he needed to be happy.

He needed to _learn_ to be happy. He had everything he ever wanted to have, he was ruler of his country, was working on growing a mustache (which Riza was strongly opposing, by the way) and he finally, after spending just under half of his life running after her, had the girl, and was going to have a family. He could deal with the mediocre job description change, and the hair that he tried to grow out of his face, but it was her and their baby that made him sweat, he just wasn't equipped to deal with a family.

But in that moment, in the still and silence of the night, and with the crickets singing to him from their homes in the grass, and his woman-_HIS woman_-sleeping soundly on his chest, he was almost content with the world. With absence of the noises of the city in the background, he could finally focus on how slow and calm her breathing was, and how her still warmth mixed with his. He could finally take a breath and come to the understanding that she was real, not just a figment of his imagination, or a girl who was always a half of a finger too far away for him to touch. She was really with him, and she wasn't going to leave like his original family that came before Madam Christmas, or any other girl he had tried to swoon in his past.

They now belonged to each other, and he was finally beginning to realize how beautiful it was.

Making sure she was sound asleep, he put a soft hand on her stomach, and smiled when she made no movement or sound besides a soft sleepy moan that escaped her.

"You've made a good choice coming to us, little guy," he whispered at her stomach, feeling the baby gently shift inside her. "We've been left alone so many times, we will _never_ leave you."

Within minutes, without knowing it, he drifted away and fell asleep, his hand still cradling her stomach, and his other around her back, her head still on his chest and his wandered gently on top of hers, as he began to give himself to sleep.

If anyone had seen them together like they were, they would have never thought they were two army junkies. He didn't look like the leader and she didn't look like his second in command.

He looked like a father, and she looked like a mother… It was almost as if…

They were a family.


	16. Chapter 16

"Winry, what are you doing?" Ed groaned from the kitchen table that morning, sipping on his orange juice and watching as Winry scurried around, cleaning everything in sight. He was happy to have the cast off his arm and leg, but he still had to wear a sling around his frail arm, and a brace on his stubborn foot that wouldn't develop right. Even with those things that should have been making him look weak, he still sat with the same confidence that filled the rooms with his presence when he had his automail.

And Winry hated it.

"I'm cleaning Edward," she spat from over her shoulder, scrubbing at a spot on the sink counter. "Maybe you can take a lesson sometime."

"Hey, don't get all pissy with me, Win!" he exclaimed, loudly setting his cup on the table, angrily. "If I hadn't spent all night up with Al…"

She stopped scrubbing at the spot and exhaled loudly, rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead. It had been hard on the both of them to take care of Alphonse, especially after Pinako passed away. He hardly ate without being forced, which made him frailer than he already was, and they never saw him smile like he used to. Not to mention that lately he had such bad nightmares, that he would thrash around in his bed so much he actually almost broke his arm once. Now, either Ed or Winry had to stay up while he slept to make sure that if he were having one of those terrors they would either wake him up, or hold him down until he stopped on his own.

And it was scary. At least to her it was.

She figured that Ed was more equipped to deal with him than she was, but it turned out that Al was just as tightlipped around his own brother as he was with her. She never thought that after he got his body back he would just sit there and wait to die… it was harsh but wasn't that what he was doing?

A hand wrapped itself around her upper chest from behind, and placed itself on her other shoulder. Small kisses and light breaths caressed the crook of her neck, and she found that the scary thoughts that danced in her head started melting away, or at least they were down to a dull roar where she could forget about them for a moment. She reached around her back and let her hand comb itself through Ed's long hair that he hadn't braided yet, being so early in the morning. She loved it when his hair was down and he kissed her like that. She couldn't wait until his other hand was worth using again so maybe that could be wrapped around her midsection… or travel down to other places…

"I'm sorry," he whispered after making her squirm when he bit at the soft flesh on her neck, "I haven't even said good morning to you, yet."

His hand that was resting on her shoulder, slowly traveled down to her breast, and he could feel her nipple harden under his palm. Her eyes closed and she moaned just the littlest bit as he went back to work on the back of her neck.

"Are you sure he's still asleep…?" she whispered at him, referring to Al. Ed, who had now grown about a head taller than his new girlfriend, turned her around to face him and pushed her gently up against the counter. It made him feel tall and unbelievably powerful to look down on someone, rather than having everyone look down on him, even though he was still quite short for a seventeen year old. He was pressed up against her and it made both of them tingle. He cupped her face in his left hand, and kissed her hungrily.

Her face was flushed as was his, when he pulled away and said with a smirk, "I wouldn't have done that if I weren't sure, Win." She reached up and lightly laid a kiss on his lips, before he began kissing down her face and worked back down her neck.

She was starting to get aroused, like she always did when he was like this, but she had to think about what she was doing. Al would be up any minute, and the Fuhrer and Brigadier General Hawkeye…

"Ed, what about Fuhrer Mustang and Riza?" she brought up innocently. "They said they'd be here by now…"

Ed pulled away and groaned, letting his good arm wrap around her back and his waist push up against hers. "Please don't bring up Fuhrer big-pain-in-my-ass when I'm trying to concentrate on you," he said lightly, "besides, if she's pregnant, than he's driving." He thought about what he said for a minute and then leaned in to pry her lips apart with his.

"And what does that mean, all knowing Edward Elric?" she asked sarcastically, when they pulled away. He touched her face with the back of his hand, gently and smiled at her.

"They'll be late," he stated like it was a fact, letting the hand that was behind her back move to her front where he played with the button on her pants, "and, if this is the only time we're going to have alone for the next few months…" he let his face come close to hers and chewed on her earlobe, whilst his hand moved farther into her pants… under her panties… Now there was no point in trying to keep her arousal to herself, as soon as his fingers touched her, there was no doubt in her mind that he knew.

She moaned softly at him, as he played with her, almost letting herself run with it. "But… they're… coming… soon…" He smiled again, and kissed her once more, this time, she was more willing to let him.

"Not before you do, Winry," he whispered. _Oh god she wanted him._ But she had to stay strong!

They knew they loved each other for a long time, but they always felt like doing anything about it wouldn't work out like they wanted it to. Ed was always too scared to let his feelings run away without him, and the fact that he was in the military when he started _really_ figuring out that he wanted her, he found even more of a reason to keep his mouth shut. He knew there was something big that wanted him, maybe to kill him, and he was damned if he was ever going to put her in danger just because of a few stupid _feelings_. Of course, there were signs that they both dropped for each other that hinted around affection, there was no way to get around that; they were both humans after all, but it did scare him every once in a while. It was bad enough that sometimes he thought he was going to be dead before he could he could even tell her he loved her, but knowing she might have been feeling the same way just killed him.

And now that he _knew_ for a complete fact that she loved him too, and the threats were over for good… well, he would be lying if he said he hadn't been taking advantage of it. They weren't _going all the way_ yet, both being virgins, but they were sure to take the time to explore each other. There was heavy petting under blankets when they listened to the radio together, as long as they knew Al was asleep (since he slept _so_ much and _so_ heavily) and long kisses behind closed doors, but that was pretty much it. Of course they wanted to work up to… _doing it_ eventually, especially Ed (being a young man with raging hormones and nothing else better to do) but they wanted to be sure they were ready for something like that. After all, Ed never wanted to make her cry _ever_ again. If holding off on losing his virginity was a price he had to pay, then he was going to have to deal with it.

"Edward," she scolded lightly, pulling his hand out of her pants and still looking him in the eyes, "Just because you can't do alchemy anymore, doesn't mean you have to 'deconstruct' my vagina every five minutes! You can find better things to do with your hands, can't you?" She smirked at him and spun around to work on the spot again.

He just stood there and smiled at her for a moment. She was the same old Winry, after all. There was no way in hell he would ever get her to do anything unless she wanted to do it on her own, and that's part of the reason he loved her. She was so strong and at times, when she had a wrench in her hands, a little scary, even though she was delicate and gentle at the same time! He guessed he loved her because she was the only thing he couldn't quite figure out. He knew the physical make up of almost anything you could mention, but when it came to her, he never knew what to think, and in a way, he didn't want to fully figure her out. Then all the fun would be gone.

"Wait, Ed," she stopped to turn around toward the front of the house, "do you hear that?" He listened for a moment until he heard the sound of tires coming up the dirt road driveway.

Riza's eyes fluttered open to see Roy slumped over the steering wheel, and taking a deep yawn at the road in front of them. Prying the side of her face off the inside of the car window, she realized that she was back on her own seat now, even though she remembered originally falling asleep on his chest. Making sure he hadn't noticed she awake, she looked out the window where she watched a black bird fly right beside the car off in the distance for a moment before it bobbed away, dove into the grass, and landed somewhere. With how gray the morning sky was, she guessed wherever they were; there was a light rain that just ended. She guessed that must have been why he was awake right now. He never liked it when it rained, even before he learned that his alchemy was useless in it. The only difference is the fact that now he had a reason to hate it.

Looking down at her stomach as her baby again shifted inside her, she felt an all too familiar queasy feeling arise in her throat. She hadn't eaten anything in hours, it made no sense to feel sick, but then again nothing in her life seemed to make sense anymore. She supposed that it was no use trying to figure it out.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," he grunted tiredly, not looking at her pail face as she stared up at him.

"Didn't you sleep at all?" she questioned pushing her body up in the seat.

"For a few hours," he replied, sighing, "Then I woke up. I couldn't keep my eyes closed after that, so I started driving again." She studied his face as the sick feeling radiated through her, and though he wasn't facing her, she could clearly see the ill looking bags under his eyes, and the way his face drooped just a bit more than it should have. Did he really hate the rain _that_much?

When it rained at the house she lived in as a child, and of course, being an old house it did leak and creek a fair amount, he would take every excuse to stop her in whatever she was doing and talk to her. In a way, she liked the rain for getting them together. In one old rain storm when she was seventeen, when she was trying to catch all the drips from the ceiling in pots and pans, he called her into his room and kept her there for hours, just talking about nothing and everything at the same time. He opened up to her about his family, something they never talked about, even as close as they were as friends. He never made her think he was afraid of the rain, he even made her believe he wasn't afraid of anything, but now, being older and thinking back on the incidents during storms, she could see right through him. During that same rainstorm, she told him about her mother dying, and her father doing... some things that she didn't like, but couldn't say no to. At first, he thought she was talking about sexual or physical abuse, but she was more talking about the fresh tattoo on her back. Of course, she did follow her father's orders to not tell Roy about them until he said he was ready, but Riza needed someone to talk to about it, and really... she had no one else.

In fact... now that she thought about it, that same rainstorm was also present for her first kiss, and it would have also been the gas that fueled the loss of her virginity had she only been ready for it.

She decided that she absolutely loved the rain that day, and she was sure that it was also the day that he decided he wouldn't be _afraid_ of it anymore. Today, he still hated it, but with her experiences with him, she was sure he really _wasn't_ afraid of anything.

"Are we almost there, sir?" she asked him, pushing the queasiness down into her chest.

"Almost," he said, blinking hard to try to keep from falling asleep.

"Do you want me to drive?" He looked over at her wide eyed.

"No!" he exclaimed crankily after a moment. "I'm fine."

"You're going to fall asleep," she replied, waking up fully now. "If you want to kill yourself because you couldn't stay awake driving, then that's your choice. Just remember, you have someone else in the car with you, and she likes life, sir."

He just smiled. Of course she would say something like that, she always_ was_ a grouch in the morning.

"We'll be at the Rockbell house in less than ten minutes. I think I can stay awake until then." She sighed and looked back out the window, not realizing just how close they were as they passed a rickety, rotting, wooden, sign by the side of the road that read "Welcome to Risembool" and the road they were on began to hold a bunch of old businesses and houses, though there were no people outside because of the early hour.

"Sorry, sir," she said swallowing her pride and knowing she was wrong. "I hadn't realized how lose we were."

"It's fine," he replied shooting her a quick, tired smile, "You couldn't have known after all, and I know you just… care."

"You must be exhausted," she said reaching over and lightly placing a hand on the back of his neck. "You never compliment me."

"Maybe I should more often." After last night, he promised himself he would. "You're an amazing woman, Brigadier General."

She snapped her hand back and quickly looked out the window to hide a blush blossoming on her face.

"You're speaking nonsense, sir," she said coldly, reminding herself of Olivia Armstrong. It was a random thought, but she wondered how she was all of a sudden.

"Well, you think what you want, and I'll think what I want. How's that?" he said figuring he was making her feel uncomfortable. If he was going to love her, he couldn't love her with everything in his heart all at once. Doing that might just kill her on the inside with the kind of person she was. He knew he had to ease into the new life they would have together, and one day they would be almost like a normal couple… well… ok, he was the flame alchemist, as well as the leader of a country and she was a sniper in addition to being his number two in command, they could only _be_ so normal.

But he hoped that one day; they would find some kind of normalcy to call love.

"There it is," he pointed out the window at a small building that had swirls of smoke floating from the chimney and into the sky, "I guess we can call this our… home… for the next few months."

She smiled when she seen Ed (about a foot taller than he was six months earlier, when she last saw him) standing on the porch with his long, blond hair down, one hand in a cast, and the other resting on a wooden cane, as he smiled down at Winry as she ran over to Riza's side of the car. Riza quickly cranked down the window, and Winry basically dove inside it to give her friend a gigantic hug, even before Roy stopped the car or turned off the engine.

"RIZA!" she exclaimed, clinging onto her chest through the window. "How have you been?" She could hardly contain her excitement, and Riza couldn't help but let out a small laugh at the girl.

"I'm fine, considering," she replied, still laughing, "Never mind about me, how's everything here?"

Winry finally let go and began talking to her from outside the door. "Actually, my answer's the same as yours," she said, happily.

Roy didn't try even thinking about interjecting in the girl's conversation. Riza sounded happy, and he was too tired for talking then anyway, so he proceeded to get out of the car and grab some bags from the trunk.

"Long time, no see, eh Fuhrer?" he heard Edward's voice swoon behind him, and he was surprised he didn't notice him hobble up before he said anything. He _must_ have been tired. He turned around and shook his hand, finally seeing how tall he had grown.

But he was still shorter than Roy, thank God.

"Fullmetal," he smiled as he said his name, a crooked grin Ed was all too familiar with. They heard Winry and Riza talking about how the baby was using Riza's bladder as a punching bag most of the time, as they walked away and into the house. Black Hayate trotted behind them and greeted Den with happy sniffs.

Roy turned back to gather the rest of the bags, and Ed reached over to get a light one to help.

"Just because you're Fuhrer, don't expect to be treated any different, Mustang," Ed warned quietly, stopping in front of the front door ahead of Roy, when they began to follow the girls with the luggage. "And, just so you know, it's just Ed. Remember; I'm not in the military, and I don't want to be called Fullmetal. I'm trying to start a new life."

Roy tried his best not to draw attention to the fact that when Ed referred to his "new life" his eyes were resting solely on the blond teenaged girl in the kitchen, so he just nodded in agreement. After all, if he wasn't nice to Ed, Riza was probably going to kill him.

_********Yay! Go EdWin! There's going to be more, so get ready everybody! **_  
><strong><em>Thanks so much for all the reviews, it really means a lot to me, and they're always welcome.******<em>**


	17. Chapter 17

Roy Mustang sat at the Rockbell table, gingerly sipping at his cup of coffee that Winry offered him when she noticed the dark bags under his eyes, finding himself in an almost comatose state in the insanely comfortable wooden chair. He hardly even looked over at Riza after she came back from the bathroom and sat in the chair next to him as she carried on a conversation with the two teenagers. Instead, he just let his mind go blank and let the bitter smell of his drink tickle at his nose and the hotness numbly travel down his throat. He didn't know if it was the nerves of a soon-to-be-father, or the lack of sleep he had been getting as of late, but he found himself staring off into space more than he ever had before, and discovering that his waterlogged brain _COULD_ in fact be blank, which was new for him. Being an alchemist, he was constantly trying to find the answers to everything, even random useless things, or at least he was thinking about _something_, but now… he was able to actually just think of _nothing_.

"Sir," his mind was snapped back into the room with the sudden touch of Riza's hand on his thigh. _Oh __yeah, __there __are __other __people __in __the __room __too__… __damn, __I __must __be __sick__…_ "Are you feeling alright?"

He quickly smiled after scanning the room to see Winry looking worriedly at him, and Ed looking at him awkwardly.

"Yes, Brigadier General, thank you," he replied, attempting to take another sip of his coffee to prove he was fine, but found that he had already drank it all, so he just pretended he actually drank it and went back to smile at his subordinate. Riza, knowing everything about him, knew the cup was empty but said nothing.

Ed slipped his hand out of the sling for a moment to move it around, shrugged, and picked up his cup of orange juice with it. He smiled when he found it didn't hurt like it once did, but losing his composure and taking it to his lips too fast, his eyebrow twitched in pain. He didn't draw too much attention to himself, but Winry smiled at him and shook her head, before looking back over to Riza; the only other seemingly competent person at the table.

"So…" Winry began, "How are you two, anyway?" Riza blushed, not used to anyone trying to figure her personal life out because of fear.

"Well, we've been adjusting to the situation," she replied, as Roy sat next to her, wondering if he was just completely exhausted. "It's been slow, of course, but I think we're getting there."

"Are you going to get married?" Ed almost spat out his orange juice from how frank she sounded, and Mustang's head shot up out of his exhaustion.

"What?" he exclaimed, hoping whatever he heard was nothing more than effects of his lack of sleep, as Ed just looked at Winry angrily, continuing to choke on his orange juice like a five year old.

Riza just kept on blushing and feeling out of place and awkward. _Marriage?_ She was just beginning to be content with the fact she was pregnant and finally dealing with Mustang being the father, she wasn't half ready to be married! Especially to Mustang, as bad as that sounded. She had always loved him, followed him for a better part of her life, and found it surprisingly easy to live with him under the same roof, but as for actually making it official… that might be just a little too much to handle.

Of course, like all girls, she once dreamed of wearing a beautiful white gown and walking down the aisle into the arms of a strong, handsome, soft eyed man, saying her vows, and driving off into the sunset with him at the steering wheel to start their own life. She daydreamed about having lots of babies in a little house in the country, and maybe a dog too, and she envisioned herself looking out a beautiful bay window, stirring a pot on the stove for their dinner, and watching her children play in the back yard. But with the time in the military, by the side of Roy Mustang, those dreams slowly started fading away like the rest of her personal life... _and_ her personality for that matter. She started facing the reality that she would never have that, that the boys in her neighborhood were right when they said she would be an old maid…

…but by her side, looking weirdly at her, was a strong, handsome, (not so) soft eyed man, and down the hall playing with Den was a good dog who was alright with having a family, and in her belly was a beautiful child that was going to have a mother AND a father, something she only had for a short while. All that was missing was the ring on her finger, and the white flowing gown.

She looked back up at Winry again and sighed.

"We… haven't really talked about that… yet," she answered quietly, which made Winry feel horrible that she embarrassed her. It was kind of a fact of life for the teenager: if a woman is pregnant by a man that wasn't a sleazebag, he married her. Looking closer though, she realized that Riza didn't have a ring on her finger.

The room was filled with a strange silence, and awkward coughs for a moment before Ed finally pushed himself up from the table.

"I think I'm going to go check on Al," he announced, letting his hand hang out of the sling and grabbing at a wooden, cherry colored cane. "He usually doesn't sleep this late." What they didn't know was that he was silently thanking God he had a reason to leave the room. He wasn't thrilled about Mustang living under the same roof as him… eating _his_ food… drinking out of _his _cup… BREATHING _HIS_ AIR! Riza was alright by his books, and if anything, she was a good friend to talk to and she offered good company, but as far as he was concerned, Mustang was a big pain in the ass who couldn't keep his damn smartass comments to himself, and that was the last thing the Rockbell house needed. It took some convincing from Winry for him to agree to let Mustang stay there as well as Riza, but after a few hits to the head with her wrench and a few more threatening words, he left the conversation with a sigh and an announcement that let her know that he was labeling everything in the fridge, and if he found out Roy touched any of it, he was justified in killing him. Walking out of the room they were sitting in, he couldn't help but notice that even with Mustang's lethargic state, the two were incredibly… cute (a description he never thought in a million years would be wasted on Mustang or a girl he was with) but he was still wondering why Riza would pick _him_ over _all _other guys in the world.

With Ed gone the silence returned again for another moment.

"So, um…" Winry began cautiously, twirling her hair in her fingers, "You _are_ planning on staying at least until the baby is born, right?" Riza felt a gigantic weight lift off of her shoulders, and she sighed in relief.

"Are we welcome?" she asked, hoping the answer was yes. She didn't want to go back to Central when she was VERY pregnant-the roads were already making her feel ill, and she couldn't help but think that ever since she seen Risembool she kind of already decided it would be a nice place to raise a family, and since she couldn't do that, she _did_ want to at least have her baby in the fresh country air, so it's first breath would be as clean as she could provide.

"Of course!" Winry gushed, all the while imagining all sorts of baby preparation things she was going to have to help the couple with while they were there, and completely loving it. She would be lying if she said she hadn't toyed with the idea of buying tiny little baby clothes, and picking out baby toys that looked like cute little plush automail limbs maybe, and then helping Roy build the cutest, _MOST BADASS CRIB_ in all of Amestris, and…

"Winry…" Ed calmly called from the other room. Riza could tell he was only _acting_ calm. Something was wrong. "Could you come here for a minute?"

Snapping out of her fantasies, she looked up at Ed worriedly, and nodded, excusing herself from the table and walking over to him.

Riza coolly sipped at her tea and proceeded to eavesdrop on them.

"I think we need to call the doctor, Win," she heard Ed whisper.

"Why? What's wrong now?" _This __isn__'__t __the __first __time __something__'__s __gone __wrong?_

"I asked him to come downstairs to see Mustang and Hawkeye, and he told me he didn't _feel _like it."

"Well, maybe he's just tired."

"I know my brother, Winry," he whispered back, now increasing in volume. "I told him she's pregnant, thinking 'hey, it's Al, he loves babies, his face will light up when he touches her stomach and he'll look happy for once,' but… nothing. Not even a fucking glimmer of a smile. Something's wrong Win, I know it is."

Riza felt a little used for them thinking she would be ok with anyone touching her stomach without asking. The ordeal she had to go through with strangers at grocery stores or on the street asking when she was due and randomly asking to touch her, honestly pissed her off, not to mention it also made her feel quite uncomfortable, but she figured that if Alphonse was having a problem and wanted to touch the baby, she wouldn't say no. After all, it was _Alphonse_, not some stranger.

She took a brief break from listening in on the conversation in the other room, to try to talk to Roy.

"Sir, did you hear that?" she whispered to him. "There's something wrong with Alph-," She stopped when she looked over and saw her 'knight in shining armor' sitting in the chair, arms crossed over his chest, head arched back, eyes closed, and mouth agape. She smiled at him for a moment, and almost laughed at how sweet he looked. Of course, she never found it… _cute_ when he fell asleep while doing paperwork, which he did… _a __lot_, but now, looking at him sitting there at the table in an accidental slumber, she couldn't deny how much she hoped her, no, _their_ child would look like he did when he slept.

She decided to wake him up, and nudged him hard in the ribs, sending him lurching forward in his seat in a sweat and snapping his fingers together angrily. Riza, knowing his gloves were still in his bag with the rest of his military clothes didn't even jump. When he noticed he was awake, he took a deep breath and wiped his hand over his head as he sat back.

"Dreaming again, sir?" she asked unenthusiastically.

"No," he said simply, letting his breathing come back to normal. "I was fighting Bradley." She smiled again and patted his shoulder mockingly.

"Did you win?"

"Psh, obviously." he waved her off like it was nothing. "Of course, you _did_ interrupt me before I delivered the final blow, but I guess I'll just leave the job to my subconscious." Lately he had been having more nightmares than usual, even though his sleep was almost always restful before Riza got pregnant. She decided that it had to be sympathy pains, despite of how much he refused to believe it. As far as he was concerned, sympathy pains were stupid, unscientific babble that a bunch of weaker soon-to-be fathers came up with because they were having a stomach ache while the mother of their child was in labor.

"I am so sorry, sir," she sarcastically apologized. He moaned angrily, wiping the sleep from his eyes before laying his hand on hers.

"You should be," he replied smiling, but then he heard the muffled words coming from the other room that sounded like Edward and Winry. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," she said listening back into the conversation. "I think there's something wrong with Alphonse."

"Well, what do you think a doctor's going to do?" Winry's voice faded back in. "No one can do anything anyway… I mean, what if they tell us he has to be in a-,"

"They can't do that," Ed interrupted, sounding quite stubborn and headstrong. "I lost him once and I won't lose him again. Besides, all they need to do is get him out of bed since he won't listen to us anymore."

"If we call a doctor too many times, they're going to think we're not even caring for him at all, and no matter how much you don't want to believe it, after a while, they're going to try to do something about it. Al's still a minor, remember."

"And I've taken good care of him for years without anyone wanting to take him away from me," he stated, like there was no question about it.

They heard Winry sigh before she spoke again.

"Fine," she said quietly, "I'll call the doctor. And for the record, I think we should tell Mr. Mustang and Riza about it before he gets here."

Now an angry sigh from Edward.

"I knew it would be a mistake letting them stay here…"

"Edward!" she exclaimed, still in a whisper. "You can be bitter and stubborn all you want, but you know we need them as much as they need us!"

Riza and Roy both looked at each other, the same thing going through both of their minds; maybe they shouldn't have come to the Rockbell house. Honestly, they figured it would be a bad idea for different mediocre reasons, but since Riza wanted to make the trip and Roy felt an enormous danger in Central, they found it to be the best choice for everyone, especially the baby, but sitting in that kitchen listening to the conversation seeping through the wall, they both felt a little boxed in and trapped. Roy wasn't jumping for joy thinking about living with Fullmetal… or Ed, as he had to be called now, but he thought he could deal with it for his subordinate.

But listening to his voice in the other room, the way he talked (other than being a bit lower than he remembered it) he seemed more bitter than anything, like someone much older than his nineteen year old self. He was angry all the time when he was in the military with Mustang watching over him, but it was a different kind of angry. He'd jump out of his skin or throw a tantrum like a child when someone said anything about him he didn't like (especially regarding his height) but now, he just looked like he had flame in his eye all the time, all the while making others feel cold with a single look.

Something was definitely going on. Mustang and Hawkeye didn't seem to be the only ones with problems.

Riza tiredly pushed herself off of the chair, feeling like she had heard enough. She didn't like eavesdropping, or feeling helpless. If they were too stubborn to ask her for help, she was going to make herself known.

"Where are you going?" Mustang whispered, grasping at her hand. He wanted no part in affairs that he had no business in.

"Sir, they need us."

"No they don't," he replied. "Just pretend you didn't hear." She smiled at him for a moment, knowing that he only wanted the best for her, before kissing him on his forehead and walking out the door. He didn't follow, but just sat at the table shaking his head. He should have known he couldn't stop her from helping someone else.

She found them standing by the stairs, angry tears in Winry's eyes. They stopped in their argument as soon as they saw her.

"I'm sorry," Riza started feeling awkward and weak all of a sudden, "I didn't mean to intrude, but I could hear you from the kitchen."

"It's fine," Ed stated a little harsher than he intended. "The conversation was over anyway."

"Edward…" Winry began sadly, grabbing onto his arm. He jerked it away.

"Go, do what you want Win," he stated snatching up his cane and calmly walking out the front door, leaving Winry with her head in her hands, trying to figure out what to do on her own.

"Perhaps we shouldn't have come," Riza broke in after a moment, "it seems quite stressful, and I'm sure you don't need our problems on top of everything else-,"

"No, please," Winry looked up desperately, "Stay."

The look in the younger woman's eyes reminded Riza of her own, when she found out Roy was going off to war, after her father died. Winry and Riza were so similar in many ways, and she knew exactly how she must have felt all alone in a house with two sick boys she had to take care of. Of course she had to have been used to being on her own, or at least to the feeling of lonesomeness, but that look, that same look that she had so many times throughout her own childhood begged for someone to care…

Just for a moment, as stupid as she knew it sounded in her head; she wanted to cry in the arms of her mother.

Riza smiled warmly at Winry and took her by the hand. The sudden touch of an older woman made Winry feel almost instantly a little bit better.

"We're not going anywhere if you don't want us to," she said gently, "just let us know what's going on, ok?"

**_******I am so sorry for the VERY VERY VERY late update! A lot of things have been going on in my life and it's been really hard to write, but I wont go into it on here, if you have my deviantArt, then you know, but I'm tired of using it as an excuse. All I'm going to say is, I'll try._**

**_Anyway, thank you for being patient and all and STILL checking for updates, even though there haven't been any for months. It means more to me than anyone can even know right now. And I'm sorry about messing up on some of my spelling, I'm also working on that. I learned the correct spelling for RISEMBOOL and black HAYATE, and if there's anything else I missed, please tell me, I AM trying to prove myself and improve on my writing skills. _**

**_Again, thank you for all your support in the reviews, AND your constructive criticism. The ones that aren't constructive, I don't really pay attention to, so you can keep that to yourself, thanks. Stay tuned! There's going to be a flashback in part 18. :) ******_**


	18. Chapter 18

"You're being ridiculous," Mustang groaned as Riza ushered him into Pinako's old bedroom and shut the door behind them. "I don't need to sleep. I'm perfectly fine." Riza crossed her arms over her chest and gave him that crooked brow look she always gave him when he wasn't doing his paperwork when he was supposed to. His tired black eyes struggled to stay open, but he strongly stood there and stared back at her.

"You were passing out at the kitchen table not even five minutes ago," she stated as she walked across the room to the bed, where she fluffed the pillow at the head of it and drew back the covers. "You were driving all night long and you're tired. Sleep."

"I just told you once, and I'll tell you again; I'm fine," he (unconvincingly) reassured her, holding his ground stubbornly, still standing at the door.

"Sir, you'll be more useful if you get some rest."

"I'll rest when I'm dead."

"You'll be dead sooner than you first predicted if you don't get in this bed in the next few seconds, Sir." He continued to stand there, searching for truth in her eyes, and when he found it, he finally broke and sat at the end of the bed. "Thank you, Sir," she said.

As soon as she walked out of the room, he was flat on his back, asleep.

The drips of water pattered softly down onto the house that day, Roy noticed as he sat in the spare room with his nose in a book of alchemy. He hated the rain. Sure, water was essential for any living thing to keep living, but it was also a neucence. He decided to close his book and walk around the house for a while to try to clear his head. Besides, the rain was always loudest in the room he was living in.

When he walked out into the kitchen for a glass of water a distressed looking Riza brushed past him without a word, holding a stack of pots in her arms that was probably taller than her. He watched her stop and peer up at the ceiling until there was a drip coming out of the boards. She took a pot from the top of the stack and threw it down with so much finesse; it reached the floor before the raindrop did.

"Do you need some help?" he finally said when he realized he was staring at her. Of course he knew she probably didn't need any, but it wasn't polite to stare at someone, especially her. He felt like if he just asked something it would look better for him.

"OH!" she exclaimed when she realized he was even there. She spun around, surprised, and all the pots crashed all over the kitchen floor. She muttered an obscenity under her breath and dropped to her knees to pick them up.

"I apologize, Mr. Mustang…" she said, just above a whisper, as she tried to pile them up in her arms like before.

"For what?" he laughed, kneeling down on the floor beside her and picking up some pots also. "I should be the one apologizing."

When she pushed herself up again, realized she was only carrying half of her previous load, and saw the rest of them in his arms beside her she couldn't help blushing.

"You don't have to help, you know… I can do it myself…"

"Don't worry about it," he smiled. He never got to spend much time with her really, if he looked like he was helping her maybe he could turn that around. "I can't concentrate on alchemy right now anyway. You'd be giving me a break from a very… VERY dry read." She felt the palms of her hands start sweating, and she thought about it for a minute.

She had the biggest crush on this boy living with her for a pretty long time, probably for a year or so he'd been living with them, and the only thing that kept her from looking like a fool around him was basically just not being around him at all. She kept herself busy and tried to not look at him whenever he was around. If she looked at him, she melted.

She supposed it was time to try to get over it. She smiled warmly to cover up the blush blossoming on her face and agreed to let him help her. Besides, it was an old house, but not only that, it was a big house also. Perhaps two hands would be better than one, and it was no use trying to get her father out of his study unless there was food on the table, or a bathroom visit that was needed.

"If you can keep up with me Mr. Mustang, you're welcome!" she exclaimed.

"What do you mean _IF_? I hate to be sexist but…"

"Well, we'll just see then wont we?" she said sweetly, and at the same time sarcastically, right before she bolted out of the room and up the stairs. "Come on slow poke!" she called from the top of the stairs, "We don't have all day!"

That's when he darted after her.

When the rain finally stopped and the pots were laid all over the house to catch the drips, Roy and Riza both sat at the kitchen table sipping at glasses of orange juice, panting from running all over the house together.

"Who knew a house could have rain on the inside?" he inquired taking another sip. Riza didn't bother answering his question with anything more than a shrug and a smile. Of course he was going to complain about the exercise he had just gotten as a cover up, but the truth was, he was happy to spend time with his master's daughter, to have had an innocent get together with her and learn things about her. One of the things he found out was that she was quite an energetic and competitive person. He was obviously studying her moves closely, and realized whenever he would put a pot on the floor to catch a drip, he would look around and see that she had already placed two down and was onto the next room.

Competitive women were fine by him.

"So…" Riza started nervously, "So you're from Central right?"

"Umhmm," he muttered placing his glass back on the table where it made a ring on the wood.

"I've always wanted to go there…" she continued, "I've read amazing things about Central… I bet it's a lot more interesting than anything here, huh?"

"Not really," he replied. "I mean, there are like… robberies… and then there's the military headquarters… but really, that means that if you're not a soldier or a family member of a soldier, there's really nothing much for you." She looked down at the table a bit disappointed.

"So… there's really nothing there at all?"

"Hm…" he thought about it for a moment. In all honesty, he found the city boring and much too loud, but if Riza wanted to hear something good about it, he was going to try to think of something. "Well," he continued, "There are a bunch of different shops there, and they're always changing. You can find things from all over the world, which is pretty cool if you know where to look."

"I read in a book once that had pictures of royalty from Xing, and the women all wore these beautiful long robes that went from the top of their necks all the way down to the floor! Do you think I could find something like that in one of those shops?"

"Maybe," he replied taking another sip. She really was beautiful when she smiled. He made a mental note to spend time with her more often. Of course, living in the same house, they came in contact with each other quite often, but usually, as soon as he smiled at her in passing, she would make up an excuse to go somewhere else. She was actually half decent company. "You must read a lot."

"Not really," she said quietly. "I guess I just like to be… informed. I want to see what it's like out there. How different people act and look like. I want to be prepared for anything… at least that's how I think of it…"

Prepared for anything; that would be a trait that would make her valuable to him for a long time, but he didn't think of that, that day. Instead he thought of how she looked in the light of the kitchen window, the sky a shade of pink from the day's storm that decided to blow through and make them spend time with each other, even though it was just for a mundane and ordinary chore. He thought about how he wanted to know things too, one of the traits he held that brought him to the Hawkeye household to learn the art of alchemy. She was like a less bruised version of himself, nothing like the girls back in central, who really were nothing to his taste.

"Is that why you want to learn alchemy from my father?" she asked. He smiled and brought the glass to his lips again.

"Yes," he said simply. "I'd love to see the world one day, and I think alchemy can perhaps help me do just that." She got really quiet after that, and traced a ring of water on the table with her finger.

"Does that mean you're planning on going into the military, Mr. Mustang?"

"Please, it's Roy. You don't have to be formal," he said.

"I'm sorry… Roy." The same thing happened to her then as when she said his name as an adult. Both of them started to melt, but maybe more so because of raging teenage hormones.

"I may one day, but I'd like to keep my options open," he said to her, which seemed to cheer her up a little bit. He knew the Hawkeyes didn't particularly like the idea of war, but what they didn't know was that he was sending letters to recruiters for months about a chance to be considered as a state alchemist.

"That's good I guess. I think if more people realized how much we needed them here, they would stop leaving to go in the military."

Years later she followed him.

"Sir," he woke to her voice, slowly bringing him out of the dream he was having. She sat by his side on the bed and was slowly taking her hand away from his face. As he opened his eyes to her, looking at the same Riza as he was looking at on the inside of his eyelids, he rivaled at how remarkable she was. She really was the same person now as she was then, even though in between she may have lost herself.

He propped himself up on his elbows, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes, and she scooted farther on the bed so she could put her feet up also. Her back was killing her from the road trip and the day's activities.

"How are you feeling, sir?" she asked with a sigh.

"I'm fine, thanks," he replied, "I guess you were right. I really needed that nap, thank you Brigadier General." She smiled and closed her eyes, tiredly. "Are you alright?" He reached over and touched her stomach lovingly.

"I suppose I'm alright," she started. "Winry and I called that doctor."

"How did that go?" He wished he could have said he didn't care. If it were about Ed, that might have been true.

"Well, he was able to get Alphonse out of bed, but he still won't walk. At least Winry shoved some food down his throat." He let out a small chuckle, and closed his eyes as well. There was a long tired silence before Riza went on.

"He checked on us as well," she finally said, referring to the person living in her stomach. Now Mustang was interested. It wasn't the fact that she was checked out; it was the way she told him she was checked out. They had worked together for more years then either of them wanted to admit, and they could tell when the other was distressed. The way she was talking presented that there was more to the story then he knew already, or maybe cared to hear.

"Is everything ok?" he exclaimed jolting up in bed, wide eyed. She opened hers to meet his worrying dark eyes.

"Oh, yes, the doctor said that both heartbeats were normal and strong, he just wants me to rest more than I have been." He sighed a breath of relief.

"We can do that. All that matters is that you and the baby are healthy. If both your heart and the baby's heart are strong, then there can't be much wrong."

"You thought I meant mine and the baby's heart, sir?" He stared at her blankly, not quite knowing what she was talking about. Of course, two heart beats meant one for her and the other for their baby… right?

"I suppose I should have said all _three_ heart beats were healthy and normal."


	19. Chapter 19

_Stupid __Al_, Ed thought as he strolled down the street away from the house. His younger brother was really pissing him off lately, sitting around the house and moping around like his life was so freaking hard. It was like he completely forgot everything Ed had given up for him, years of searching for his brother's body, failing so many times after thinking he had a lead, and never giving up no matter how hard it was to keep going. He did everything for his younger brother. He ate, slept, and lived that idea of Al someday getting his body back, and now what did he do with it?

Nothing, that's what, and it pissed Edward off to no extent. Of course, he had to be careful not to break him now, with him being so fragile and depressed. Honestly, sometimes he would just want to take him to the back of the house, rip him out of his wheel chair, and slap him in the face until he was sure his brother's children would feel a sting on their cheek, but the doctor advised a more gentle way of being around him, which as far as Ed was concerned, he took it as just not being around at all, or at least waiting until he was asleep.

He stopped when he found himself at the mouth of the river and slowly lowered himself down to sit on a rock and watch the water, where he seen the sun rise. All he was trying to do was live again. Enough running after the wind. Enough dreaming in alchemic calculations. Enough missing his chance with the girl he loved. Just… enough! He was tired and he felt old, and he was just shy of turning 18. He sighed heavily and looked out beyond the water. He supposed he knew how Al felt, or at least he tried to understand.

There was his brother, in a metal body for years, which Ed always felt horrible and guilty for putting him in that situation, and all of a sudden, he gets shoved back into a decaying, skinny, tired, older version of himself. It must have been a lot. A lot of everything. He probably didn't know who he was anymore.

Edward took a deep breath and clapped his hands together.

_Please… just this one time…_

His hands crashed down onto a small rock that lay in front of him, and for a minute, he really thought something was going to happen.

But of course, the rock stayed just as it was when he first seen it. He almost started to cry out of frustration and snatched the cold piece of earth in his hands. He just looked at it, clenched in his good fist like a vice, and he stared at it for a long time, half waiting for it to change into something else, half letting all his frustration burn out of his eyes and kill the rock slowly with his stare alone.

"God damn it!" he cried out, and chucked the rock as hard as he could into the water. He put his head in his hands when he heard the splash it made yards away from him.

"Edward…" he heard Winry's soft voice behind him, to which he snapped his head up to see her standing there, a few paces behind where he was sitting, her hair blowing in the wind, worry in her eyes. Maybe even fear. So now he scared her… "You should come inside Ed," she continued, "It's getting cold and the radio announcer said it might snow."

He hadn't even noticed it was cold at all, which was strange because usually his arm would start to throb in cold weather. He moved it a little bit before putting it back in his sling and finally noticed the pain he had forgot about only a second ago.

"Yeah," he sighed, looking away from her again, trying to put on his fake smile so she wouldn't worry too much about him. "Yeah, I'll be in in a second."

"Okay," she replied quietly after a minute. He still didn't move. "Ed?" she ventured.

"Yeah?" he asked, still not looking at her. She waited for another moment of silence to go by.

"I love you." He let out a little laugh at her, and pushed himself up from the rock with his cane. Of course she wasn't going to let him stay out there without knowing he was following her. He watched her smile just a little bit as he walked toward her, which always seemed to lighten his load a little bit and allow him to smile himself.

"Have I told you what horrible taste you have in men, Win?" he asked when he reached her side. She giggled and took the cane out of his good hand so she could hold his hand as they walked forward toward the house together. It was a little harder to walk for him, but he hardly cared as long as he could be holding her hand, besides, it was good exercise.

"Believe me, I keep reminding myself," she giggled.

"Hey! You didn't have to agree with me!" he yelled jokingly, which just made her giggle more.

If he didn't have her, maybe he wouldn't know who he was anymore either.

"T-Three?" Mustang choked, feeling a nose bleed coming on. Hawkeye just continued to sit there with her eyes closed, looking completely content.

"Yes sir," she replied, unemotionally. "Three."

"Well, what does that even mean?" he was seriously freaking out, and he couldn't seem to put two and two together. "Does that mean our baby has two hearts?"

"Yes sir, that's exactly what that means," she answered, sarcastically, still with her eyes closed. "It means there is one heart _per__person_ in my body."

"_Twins?__"_

"Yes."

"How could that happen?" he let out before he knew what he was saying.

"Well Sir, when a man and a woman love each other very much…" she began, finding the opening to make him feel stupid.

"Damn it Hawkeye, I know how _that_ happens! I'm talking about the twin part!"

"The embryo split in halves and made two separate fetuses, Sir," she responded. Blood started to drip down his face, to which he dabbed it with a tissue he had in his pocket.

"So… twins…" he started, beginning to calm down now. He had to keep his wits about him. Obviously Riza was a little more stressed out then he was, they were in her after all. He was still losing his mind, trying to figure out why the… thingy… split… or whatever. Did that mean she was broken or something?

"Yes Sir, for the third time; twins." His nose bleed was slowing down a little bit, it was a small fit, and he decided he would save his freak out for later when he was away from her. One baby was enough to think about, but two? That changed the whole ball game. Two cribs instead of one, twice the baby food, twice the lost sleep because of constant crying, and maybe most importantly… twice the *gulp* diapers. He could shell out the money for it, of course, he was Fuhrer after all, it was more the work he was concerned about.

"Are you ok Hawkeye?" he ventured.

"I am perfectly fine, Sir." Even though anyone else would have believed her when she said this, he knew full well she was lying. Years of working together had proved their loyalty as well as a great talent that both of them had to know the other's moods. She just sat there motionless in the bed next to him, never opening her eyes to look at him, or the wall, or anything.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm using my military training to provide myself with a stable and stress free environment," she replied, "and with all due respect Sir, you're not helping." He stayed quiet for a minute and just looked at her. She really was freaking out. In fact, she was freaking out so much her own body couldn't even register it.

He calmly slid off the bed then and made his way across the room to the door. When she was this hormonal, there was nothing he could really do for her anyway, and she liked to be alone, or at least, she calmed down faster. As he placed his hand on the door handle her eyes finally opened but he refused to look at them.

"Good morning, Den," Alphonse said to the dog when she came over to say her special doggy hello to him. Winry left a little while ago to find Ed, and Mustang and Riza were upstairs doing… whatever they were doing, which left Al, Den, and Black Hayate to sit together in the kitchen and stare at each other.

He looked down at the bowl of cereal in distaste. He had no idea what a pain a body would be when he got it back. Every sound was like screaming, every light blinding, and every touch like a slap. Everything was just too… much. Even the types of food he used to really like were too rich in flavor to even enjoy. All he could seem to do was sleep and dream to get away from everything. At first, he thought that the sensitivity would eventually stop or at least get a little bit easier to handle, and he tried to push through it as best he could, but months?

Life with a body was too hard for him, and he wondered if it was always like that. Was he just noticing it then because he hadn't had a body in so long?

Everything was a struggle for him physically and mentally. The only thing that gave him the slightest bit of joy were the frequent letters he and Mai shared. He would press those letters to his nose so he could take in her scent, and trace the words that had its letters pressed into the paper just a little too far to try to feel her. The last one she sent him had a picture of her in it with her brother Lin and his new wife Lan Fan. They all looked so happy it was almost unbearable.

And he looked at her for an extra long time. She was so… beautiful. Definitely not the little girl he thought about when she was referred to. She proved how much just a few months could change a person. He traced her body with timid eyes, the new bumps on her chest that couldn't be more than extra big bug bites… the way her hips curved… her ivory skin that looked so soft that he believed he could reach through the picture and stroke her cheek.

And the next thing he knew, his hand was down his pants. It was a new sensation he was definitely used to, and when he realized what he was doing he immediately stopped himself and took a deep breath, feeling so incredibly dirty and horrible for thinking that about a friend like Mai. He turned the picture over and refused to look at it again… but that didn't stop him from dreaming about her.

He told no one about that particular problem out of embarrassment, but he just figured that it was an effect of what the doctor said was wrong with him. After a long time of studying him, he said the only thing he could come up with was the overdose of hormones from puberty which probably caused his depression. They told him that his soul had never coped with a changing body with the amount of chemicals that were in his brain, and there was probably a huge imbalance which would get better in time.

How much time? They had no idea. There weren't many people to study on, when Al was the only child to lose his body and return to it in its teenage stage of life. They had nothing to go off of, besides what was happening to Al right now.

He knew his brother and Winry wanted what was best for him, but no one knew what to do. And nothing anyone was doing was helping ease his pain. He was just tired of struggling.

"Is that you, Al?" he heard Mustang's voice behind him.

"Fuhrer?" he replied wheeling his chair around to see him.

"You certainly look different," he commented, coming into the kitchen, "Much less hair, much more weight. Looking good."

"And you don't look too bad with a mustache," Al lied putting on a smile. He looked ridiculous, but maybe it was just a midlife thing.

"Hey, do you have by any chance have a phone here?"

"Yeah, by the sink," Al pointed it out.

"Is it alright if I-,"

"Of course," he said taking a spoonful of the horrid cereal. Mustang nodded and made his way across the kitchen. He picked up the phone and dialed Cheska's number.

"It's Fuhrer Mustang," he stated when he heard the line be picked up. "Is everything alright there?"

"Well…" she began. He heard the indecision in her voice and it made him nervous. "Sir, you may want to stay in Risembool a little longer than you first planned…"

"What happened?" he demanded.

"They know who the mother of your child is, Sir." He stayed quiet, trying to catch his breath, feeling the imminent danger his Brigadier General was in. "They know it's Brigadier General Hawkeye… and they're not happy with you Sir…"

_********Sorry about the random flashback in the last part. I thought it would be a little better to put part 18 and 19 up at the same time. And yes, I'm pretty sure I'm still spelling things right.********_


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